• The medical director for Public Health England defended the PHE guidance last week advising NHS staff to wear aprons in some circumstances instead of full-length gowns when the right equipment was not available. Prof Yvonne Doyle said this was a “precautionary set of advice”, based on guidance that already existed and in line with WHO advice covering exceptional circumstances.
• More than 140,000 firms have today applied for help from the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme. The Resolution Foundation says these applications alone could cost the government £4.2bn.
• The numbers of people testing positive for coronavirus has stabilised. Prof Dame Angela McLean, the government’s deputy chief scientific adviser, said the figures were “pretty much stable and flat”.
• UK coronavirus hospital deaths total rises by 449 to 16,509. As of 5pm on 19 April, 16,509 people in hospital who tested positive for coronavirus and died, up by 449 from the day before.
•  Former prime minister Tony Blair’s thinktank has published a potential exit plan from lockdown. Blair told Sky News that an exit strategy was essential because the lockdown would do crippling damage to the economy, government revenues and people’s lives if it were allowed to continue for too long.
• Virgin boss Richard Branson says airline survival depends on government loan. “This would be in the form of a commercial loan – it wouldn’t be free money and the airline would pay it back,” The Virgin Group boss said in a blogpost.
• Boris Johnson ‘against lifting lockdown over second wave fears’. The prime minister is reported to be cautious about easing the lockdown for fear of sparking a second wave of coronavirus infections. The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, confirmed that the government was reluctant to lift the lockdown for fear of sparking a second wave of infections.

National updates from https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/20/uk-coronavirus-live-boris-johnson-against-lifting-lockdown-over-second-wave-fears