The official Covid-19 daily death toll may never be brought back following an investigation into Public Health England’s method of counting it, the Telegraph understands.
The conclusions of the review, which was ordered by Matt Hancock after it emerged officials were “over-exaggerating” deaths from the virus, are expected this week.
One expected recommendation would be to stop daily reporting altogether and move to a weekly official death toll instead, a government source said on Sunday night.
The review has been “looking at all options,” the source said.
Follow the latest coronavirus updates below.
05:37 AM
India records record number of fatalities
India has registered a record 1,007 fatalities in the past 24 hours as infections surged by another 62,064 cases.
The Health Ministry says the total fatalities touched 44,386 on Monday.
The number of positive cases reported so far are 2,215,074. At least 634,935 patients were still undergoing treatment.
India has recorded more than 60,000 cases of the virus daily in the last four days and more infections than any other country in the world for six consecutive days. It has averaged around 50,000 new cases a day since mid-June.
Infections in India remain concentrated in 10 states that contribute nearly 80 per cent of the new cases.
05:27 AM
Business lending to hit 13-year high as further redundancies loom
Banks will lend more to British businesses this year than at any point since the financial crash, as the UK seeks to stave off waves of redundancies.
In its interim bank lending forecast, EY said it was expecting business lending to grow by 14pc this year, in what would be a 13-year high. Last year, business lending grew by 2pc.
EY said in March banks lent non-financial companies more than £30bn net of repayments, which was around 100 times the average net lending of the twelve months to February.
Read the full story
04:06 AM
NZ to open travel bubble with Cook Islands
New Zealand plans to open a virus-free “travel bubble” with the tiny Pacific realm of Cook Islands before year’s end, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday, while expressing caution about a similar arrangement with Australia.
Ms Ardern said the quarantine-free travel corridor was possible because New Zealand and the Cooks – an archipelago of under 10,000 people – had successfully contained the coronavirus.
“Our expectation is that it would be in place before the end of the year,” she told reporters, adding that officials were being careful not to move too quickly on the proposal.
“The last thing anyone wants is to reopen travel, only to have it closed down again because it hasn’t been done properly.”
New Zealand has recorded only 22 coronavirus in a population of five million, and marked 100 days since its last case of community transmission on Sunday, while the Cooks declared itself virus-free in mid-April.
Read more: Portugal could come off the quarantine list – visitors to France may have to isolate on return
03:41 AM
Red Cross training 43,000 volunteers for North Korea
The Red Cross has been training more than 43,000 volunteers to North Korea, including to the locked-down city of Kaesong, to help fight the novel coronavirus and provide flood assistance, an official with the relief organisation said on Monday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared an emergency last month and imposed a lockdown on Kaesong, near the inter-Korean border, after a man who defected to the South in 2017 returned to the city showing coronavirus symptoms.
Heavy rain and flooding in recent days have also sparked concern about crop damage and food supplies in the isolated country.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has built an extensive network of North Korean volunteers to help residents in all nine provinces to avoid the virus and reduce damage from floods and landslides, spokesman Antony Balmain said.
Read more: Kim Jong-un sends aid to border city in lockdown
02:58 AM
Summary of news from around the world
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New locally transmitted cases in China fell to just 14 over the past 24 hours, the National Health Commission reported on Monday.
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Australia has reported fewer new daily cases from its virus hotspot in the city of Melbourne than on any single day since last month.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says officials have agreed to allow live performances to resume outdoors with audiences divided into 20-person “capsules”.
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Britain has recorded more than 1,000 new infections in a day for the first time since late June.
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Greek authorities have announced a record daily number of 203 new cases, with one death.
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Italy‘s tally of daily cases leaped higher on Sunday, with 463 cases, according to Health Ministry figures.
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The Indian Medical Association says 196 doctors have died of Covid-19 so far and, in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requested adequate care for physicians and their families.
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Brazil has surpassed a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths.
02:26 AM
Scientists in spat over whether to infect people in vaccine trials
Scientists working on Britain’s best hope for a vaccine are understood to be at odds about whether to deliberately infect healthy patients in order to test it.
Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, wants to recruit young volunteers for such tests in the hope it will speed up the race for a successful jab.
He is among hundreds of scientists advocating the use of “human challenge trials” which would see healthy people under the age of 30 deliberately infected in order to test the jab.
But Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the institute, is understood to have clashed with him over his intentions, believing the risk to volunteers is too high.
Read the full story
Read more: When will a Covid-19 vaccine be ready?
12:28 AM
China reports spike in cases
China reported on Monday 49 new cases in the mainland for August 9, compared with 23 cases a day earlier, the health authority said.
The National Health Commission said in a statement 35 of the new infections were imported cases. There were no new deaths.
China also reported 31 new asymptomatic patients, compared with 11 a day earlier.
As of August 9, mainland China had a total of 84,668 confirmed cases and death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
12:08 AM
The West Yorkshire village split down the middle by lockdown
The village of Menston in West Yorkshire, is used to having something of a split personality.
It is almost a local in-joke: given half of the village pays taxes to the council in Bradford, eight miles away, but the other half pay theirs to the council in Leeds, 10 miles away, residents either pick a side and proudly stick to it, or else live in a state of constant confusion. To make things worse, the village postcodes are all Leeds.
Historically, it is not a division that causes serious problems,but since the Government’s partial lockdown of the Bradford council area, however, Menston has effectively been cut in two.
Read the full story
12:04 AM
Australia reports record number of daily deaths
Australia reported a record number of daily deaths on Monday, although the number of new infections in the country’s virus hot spot fell to a near two week low.
Officials in Victoria state, which is the epicentre of Australia’s second coronavirus wave, reported that 19 people died from the virus over the past 24 hours. With other states still to report daily new case and death numbers, that already marks the country’s biggest single day rise in fatalities.
In more positive news, Victoria officials also reported 322 new cases in the last 24 hours, the lowest number of single day new infections since July 29.
Australia has recorded about 21,000 cases, and 314 deaths, still far fewer than many other developed nations.