The UK government is offering government-backed rescue loans to small businesses that took a beating from the global pandemic. The plan came after calls on the government to revamp its emergency loan scheme following denied support for thousands of cash-starved firms. Chancellor Rishi Sunak said small businesses are guaranteed of bounce-back loans with full backing […]
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The government has called in the military to test essential workers for coronavirus in a bid to hit their 100,000 tests a day target by Thursday. Military mobile units are already operating in some of the UK’s “hard to reach” areas, with plans to expand the number to “at least 96 new pop-up facilities” travelling […]
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Key worker tests for coronavirus have run out for a second day running as the government announced the UK’s official death toll from the disease passed 20,000. The latest figures report a total 20,319 deaths of hospital patients in the UK – a rise of 813 on the previous day, with home secretary Priti Patel […]
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Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has warned social distancing measures put in place to fight the coronavirus pandemic could extend into 2021. Sturgeon said a return to “the normal life that people knew” was “not on the cards in the near future” during the Scottish government’s daily press briefing in Edinburgh. The first minister published […]
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Amid fears that the true death toll of coronavirus patients remains unclear, the ONS COVID-19 figures go some way toward revealing the true picture. Care staff workers say the actual numbers may be far higher. According to Tuesday’s ONS statistics, the number of people who died from the novel coronavirus in the week leading up […]
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Human trials on a coronavirus vaccine will begin in the UK this week, with researchers appealing for volunteers to take part. Two research teams from Oxford University and Imperial College London have been promised £42.5 million of government funding, with Matt Hancock calling the search for a vaccine, “the top priority”. The health secretary pledged […]
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Boris Johnson’s government has resumed Brexit talks with the European Union after several rounds of meetings had to be cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Scottish government has called for a two year extension to the transition period as the clock ticks ever closer to the official December 31 deadline, when the transition period […]
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Government failings to tackle the coronavirus pandemic in February “may have cost thousands of lives”, according to an explosive report in today’s Sunday Times. The paper states Boris Johnson “skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus” while the government ignored scientists’ warnings and early calls for protective equipment, instead sending PPE from the UK depleting […]
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The NHS medical director has made a very public and impassioned plea for frontline workers to be given protective equipment, amid reports NHS staff are considering refusing to work without adequate PPE as stocks dwindle. Prof Stephen Powis warned the government, during today’s (April 18) Downing Street coronavirus daily briefing, that sufficient PPE must be […]
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Hundreds of migrant workers from Eastern Europe are being flown to the UK to pick and sort farm produce that would otherwise rot in the fields. The first of several planes carrying foreign farm food pickers landed at an empty Stansted airport, north of London, yesterday (April 16). Around 180 Romanian workers – wearing protective […]
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