28/04/20 COVID-19 Global News Update

The Australian government will give an update next month on the economic impact of the coronavirus before providing further outlook in June, it said on Tuesday, bowing to calls for more fiscal transparency in relation to the crisis.

In the race to develop a vaccine to end the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, charities and Big Pharma firms are sinking billions of dollars into bets with extraordinarily low odds of success. They’re fast-tracking the testing and regulatory review of vaccines with no guarantee they will prove effective.

EU banks are to receive more capital relief so they can help companies struggling in the coronavirus pandemic, without having to make crippling loan provisions to reflect a looming deep recession, sources said on Monday.

Progress towards coronavirus bailouts buoyed the shares of Lufthansa and Air France-KLM on Monday, as the protracted travel slump turned up the heat on rivals yet to secure financing needed to tide them through the pandemic.

The Northern Ireland economy will shrink by 7.5% this year as a result of coronavirus, according to a Danske Bank economist. That is relatively optimistic compared to some other forecasts. The Ulster University Economic Policy Centre has forecast a contraction of up to 10%.

Number of sales completed this year now expected to be around half of 2019 levels.

Adults at home during the coronavirus lockdown, including millions furloughed from their jobs, are being offered free online courses in digital skills. The Department for Education is launching a collection of job-related online courses, teaching numeracy, coding and internet skills.

The government is understood to be considering a hardship payment for dairy farmers after warnings tens of thousands of cows could be slaughtered. Demand for dairy products in the hospitality sector has dropped with the closure of many cafes and restaurants.

Roughly 40 per cent of UK firms expect to lay off staff over the next 12 months, a survey has shown, raising the prospect of many more job cuts in the UK economy. UK unemployment has already surged as coronavirus lockdown measures cause businesses to close or cut costs significantly.

The UK's oil and gas industry is warning that 30,000 jobs could be lost as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the low oil price.

Trading Standards has issued a number of enforcement notices to traders engaged in profiteering during the coronavirus outbreak. The body says it has received a high volume of reports of price gouging - when traders increase the price of goods or services unreasonably.

Britain’s lowest-paid workers, women and young adults have jobs with the biggest health and economic risks during the coronavirus lockdown, according to a report into the uneven impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Families of front line NHS and social care staff in England who die from coronavirus will be entitled to a £60,000 payment, the government says. Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed 82 NHS and 16 social care workers had died so far during the outbreak.

The UK’s biggest banks have said they will ease their lending conditions to make it easier for small businesses to access cash through the coronavirus business loan schemes, after chancellor Rishi Sunak offered 100 per cent guarantees to the smallest businesses.

The transfer test organisation AQE has postponed the date pupils can start to register for its tests. Registration for P6 pupils was due to open on Wednesday 29 April but has been delayed until Thursday 14 May.

A minute's silence will be held across the UK later to commemorate the key workers who have died with coronavirus. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who returned to work on Monday, will join the tribute, which starts at 11:00 BST.

The number of prisoners believed to have been infected with coronavirus may be up to six times as many as the published figure, it has emerged. Public Health England (PHE) says it has found 1,783 "possible/probable" cases - on top of 304 confirmed infections across jails in England and Wales.

Key items of personal protective equipment (PPE) were not included in the government’s pandemic stockpile when coronavirus reached the UK, an investigation has found. BBC Panorama reported that gowns, visors, swabs and body bags were left out of the stockpile when it was set up in 2009. Some of the ...

The UK’s coronavirus frontline has switched from hospitals to care homes, according to sector leaders who have dismissed Boris Johnson’s claim that the virus has been “wrestled to the floor” as premature.

Claims that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan have no basis in fact, the head of the lab told Reuters, adding that there were still no conclusive answers as to where the disease started.

Coronavirus chaos is set to wreak havoc on women’s sexual and reproductive health around the world, a report has found.

Global confirmed coronavirus cases surpassed 3 million on Monday, as the United States neared 1 million cases, according to a Reuters tally. It comes as many countries are taking steps to ease lockdown measures that have brought the world to a standstill over the past eight weeks.

Australia’s most populous state said on Tuesday it will relax some restrictions on movement, as beaches reopened amid hopes a policy of widespread medical testing will help sustain a decline in new cases of the coronavirus.

Factory workers in Ciudad Juárez rarely go on strike. Their labour rights are so weak that participating in a protest can cost them their job.

It found that contact tracing increased the speed at which new cases were confirmed by two days from an average of 5.5 days to 3.2 days with contact tracing.

An FBI-connected research group warned last year that the “anti-vaxxer” movement could pose a threat to national security in the event of a pandemic.

Italian and British medical experts are investigating a possible link between the coronavirus pandemic and clusters of severe inflammatory disease among infants who are arriving in hospital with high fevers and swollen arteries.

Jordan on Monday eased restrictions on movement aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus and allowed more businesses to reopen to help jump-start the cash-strapped economy, officials said.

French researchers are preparing to launch a human trial to test their hypothesis that nicotine can help the body combat the COVID-19 infection.

This scheme will help small and medium-sized businesses affected by coronavirus (COVID-19) to apply for loans of up to £50,000.