Coronavirus news - live: 'Completely wrong' to say Boris Johnson's mass testing plan will save Christmas, Vallance warns

Tom Peck: Will we be back to normal by Christmas? It’s a case of listening to Boris Johnson’s limitless optimism – or the experts

You may be aware by now that the novel coronavirus and its associated disease Covid-19 is a respiratory illness. It passes from person to person principally by close human contact, writes our political sketch writer Tom Peck.

And so, it transpires, that having bribed the entire country with four-quid Big Mac meals and then threatened them with redundancy if they don’t go back to the office, coronavirus is on the up again. It’s all your fault and something has to be done.

Just in case anyone was in any doubt that it was A Big Deal, Boris Johnson did one of his Downing Street press conferences, “backed up” which is to say “totally undermined” by his two top scientists.

There were graphs to show that it’s all young people’s fault. Infection rates are soaring among 20 to 29 year olds, none of whom can be trusted not to pass it on to grandma (that’s if she’s lucky enough to still be alive), so all socialising has now been banned.

Indoors, outdoors, whenever, wherever, you can no longer hang out in groups of more than six. This will sort everything out. Kill off the raves and save the world. Of course, you can still go to work. So if you’re say, aged between 20 and 29 and several orders of magnitude more likely to work in retail or hospitality, and just as less likely to be able to have access to a car and therefore need to use public transport to get there, you can carry on going to work, but you do have to stop seeing your friends.

Still, none of this mattered at all, because there’s still “Operation Moon Shot” to look forward to. Whenever Johnson is on hand to deliver bad news, which more often than not involves the fact that the previously promised good news turns out not to have been true, there is always a fresh load of good news around to cover it up.

And so operation “moon shot” had another outing. That’s the thing whereby millions of people will take millions of tests every day, allowing us all to go about our lives almost as normal, but for the small, piddling matter that the technology on which Operation Moon Shot depends does not, as yet, exist.

'Trump lied to the American people': Biden slams president over 'despicable' coronavirus lies and says he cost thousands of lives

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden lambasted Donald Trump over what the president told a journalist about the coronavirus at a time he was downplaying it in public, saying he “failed to do his job on purpose” and “lied to the American people”, our Washington bureau chief John T Bennett reports.

Mr Biden led an event on labor and jobs by slamming Mr Trump for conversations he had with Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward for a new book in which the president is on tape admitting as early as February that he knew the virus was, as the former vice president paraphrased the recorded comment, “much more deadly than the flu.”

“He lied to the American people,” Mr Biden said.

“For months, he knew how dangerous it was. He failed to do his job on purpose,” he said, calling what the president said privately and his different public description of Covid-19 “a life-and-death betrayal of the American people.”

Mr Biden spoke after White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a contentious briefing that followed reports about Mr Woodward’s coming book, “Rage.”

“The president has never lied to the American public on Covid,” she claimed, saying the president downplayed the virus publicly because “he doesn’t want to see chaos.”

Industry leader urges caution over fines for venues

Pubs, restaurants and other hospitality settings have already stepped up their efforts to minimise the risk of spreading coronavirus, an industry leader has said, urging caution over fines for venues found breaching the rules.

Responding to the new powers outlined by Boris Johnson, UKHospitality chief executive Kate Nicholls said the new rules will need the co-operation of customers in order to be effective.

“This is a challenge that the sector has already grasped and will redouble efforts to achieve, in the interest of customers and staff, and to minimise the risk of further lockdowns,” Ms Nicholls said.

"This will, of course, be more easily achieved with the co-operation of customers, so the measures to make clear the responsibility of individuals was equally welcome.

"Any fines charged against hospitality venues for breaching Covid-secure requirements must be proportionate and pertain to factors wholly under the control of the venue."

Under the new rules, venues will now be "legally required" to keep the contact details of a member from every group of visitors for 21 days, in order to pass them on to NHS Test and Trace "without delay" if needed.

New Irish cases in elderly treble in a fortnight

Three people with Covid-19 have died in Ireland, where another 84 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the past 24 hours.

Acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn said he was concerned at the continued spread of the disease in Dublin.

"If nothing changes, if we do not act now to reduce our contacts and to be much more careful in how we manage our essential contacts the number of cases in Dublin would double every 14 days," he added.

"There is a very clear call to action here."

Epidemiologist Professor Philip Nolan said in the past 14 days there have been 89 cases recorded in people aged over 75, adding: "That is close to a trebling compared with the preceding fortnight."

Additional reporting by PA

‘Forcing boys to wear masks is emasculating’: GOP QAnon candidate defies CDC guidance on face coverings

A controversial Republican congressional candidate, who has previously expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, has reportedly insisted that children should not have to wear face masks because it is “emasculating” for boys, Louise Hall reports.

On Tuesday, Georgia candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that “children should not wear masks” flying in the face of recommendations by the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), according to CNN.

In the tweet, which has now been removed from the platform, Ms Greene reportedly claimed without evidence that face-coverings are “unhealthy for their psychological, emotional, and educational growth."

According to the broadcaster, Ms Greene also suggested that “forcing boys to wear masks is emasculating” and that “masculinity isn't toxic nor dangerous" but “dem Socialism and shutdowns are.”

The tweet has since apparently been forcibly removed from the platform for “violating” the website’s rules. The platform did not specify which of its rule had been broken.

Trump stands by decision to play down virus severity

Donald Trump has defended his admission that he downplayed the severity of the virus, telling reporters “I don’t want people to be frightened”.

It comes after a series of interviews with veteran journalist Carl Bernstein for his book Rage  showed the president was aware of the potential deadly impact of the virus as far back as February, despite playing down its risks in public.

 “We want to show confidence, we want to show strength”, Mr Trump told reporters.

More from our Washington Bureau Chief John T Bennett below:

Jess Phillips: As a parent to a teenager in year 11 – I’m beyond angry about how the Covid-19 testing system has failed schools

Many parents of a school age child in modern Britain will have the pleasure of being part of the class WhatsApp group. They are a mixed blessing that both keeps tardy parents with monosyllabic children informed of costume, kit, charity events and other such vital information for you to rush around at 8.45am in the morning to sort, writes the Labour MP.

The downside is often the ability for those on the PTA to press gang you into staffing a stall at the Christmas Fair. I am in a variety of such groups and this week the tone has shifted from “gifts to buy the teacher” to a stream of information on kids who have been sent home from school in a number of Birmingham schools because of an incident of coronavirus.

Desperate parents have taken to the group to ask me where they can get a test because not only have their youngsters been told to isolate for 14 days, so have they.

I helpfully told the parents of Birmingham that I believe tests were available in Aberdeen. Which, being as Birmingham is on the precipice of a possible local lockdown, presents challenges beyond the hundreds of miles they might have to travel.

After my morning WhatsApp catchup and before I have even got out of bed (the benefit of living away from my children three days a week) I turn to my emails, and low and behold it too is full of frantic parents and childcare providers facing the exact same situation. 

Heathrow boss urges government to faset-track speedy coronavirus test

Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye is urging the government to fast track a Covid-19 test which gives results in 20 seconds.

It comes after the prime minister announced plans for mass testing under so-called Operation Moonshot, in which millions of people could be tested every day so they could "behave in a way that was exactly as in the world before Covid".

The new Virolens test, which provides results in 20 seconds, launched on Wednesday following a three-week trial at Heathrow Airport.

The test has been developed by British start-up company iAbra and is about to embark on clinical trials in order for it to be certified for medical use.

The company said the test does not need to be administered by healthcare professionals and is repeatable, with each screening device capable of carrying out hundreds of tests per day.

The current gold standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests that are conducted in labs use swabs and need to be processed at different temperatures meaning it takes longer to get results.

Mr Holland-Kaye, chief executive at Heathrow Airport, said: "Testing for Covid-19 is the lifeline that the UK economy needs to get back on its feet.

"Currently the bottleneck is the availability of the government's preferred PCR testing labs - rapid point of care tests solve that problem.

"I have experienced iAbra's test myself, alongside the PCR test - it is quicker and cheaper, and potentially more accurate.

"We urge the government to fast track this technology to protect the economy and help save millions of jobs in this country."

PA

France sees second case peak in five days

French health authorities have said infections from the coronavirus have peaked for a second time in five days with more than 8,500 new cases reported in 24 hours.

The 8,577 figure slightly below last Friday's count of 8,975 cases - however hospitalisations remain relatively low with just over 5,000 patients and nearly 600 in ICUs.

Nearly 30,800 people have died in France since the start of the pandemic, among the highest rates in Europe.

Brazil records more than 35,000 cases and 1,000 deaths in a day

Brazil has recorded 35,816 additional confirmed cases of the virus in the past 24 hours, as well as 1,075 deaths from Covid-19, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday

Brazil has registered nearly 4.2 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 128,539, according to ministry data.