England’s remaining restrictions lifted from midnight; Thailand confirms record new infections for fourth consecutive day; lockdown extended in Australian state of Victoria
- UK Covid cases could hit 200,000 a day
- Thai police fire rubber bullets at protesters as Covid failures fuel anti-government anger
- Questions grow over pilot scheme after Johnson and Sunak isolation U-turn
- See all our coronavirus coverage
7.27am BST
In the UK while vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi was on Sky News, over on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme they were also talking about the NHS app and the instructions it is giving to workers to self-isolate.
Again it seems like there are two broad schools of thought – either the app is a nuisance that is currently causing over a million people, many of whom are vaccinated, to be told to stay-at-home when they are not at risk of developing a serious bout of Covid. Or it is a valuable diagnostic tool which is simply reflecting the fact that there are a lot of Covid cases out there in England, and it is spreading.
This is a problem and I think it could get worse. It is disruptive to the business. We had to close, in the last seven days, 33 pubs due to lack of staff because of self-isolation. Across the industry we think it is about one in five of our team members who have been affected by this and therefore it is causing a real issue for us setting up business on a daily basis – we’re having to have shortened hours in some circumstances.
We’ve been talking for a while internally about living in the ‘United Pingdom’ and it has become a huge challenge for individuals and businesses. Up to 25%, in some areas, of our staff have been asked to self-isolate. We’ve been able, through flexibility and sharing of labour, to keep sites open so far but it has been a very close call in certain circumstances, and I would echo that I think there is a different way of reacting to the pings for vaccinated people and using lateral flow tests that would help industries of all sorts a great deal and keep the economy functioning.”
7.20am BST
Stanley Widianto reports for Reuters from Jakarta that trust in Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s ability to handle the pandemic has fallen sharply among the public, as authorities struggle to contain a wave of coronavirus infections that has pushed hospitals to breaking point.
Indonesia has reported more new Covid cases than any country in the world, according to the latest seven-day average from a Reuters data tracker. It was second only to Brazil in terms of the number of deaths.
