April 27, 2020 Glastonbury Community Uncategorized 0

Glastonbury

With great sadness the Glastonbury Chilkwell Guy Fawkes Carnival Committee has made the decision to postpone the 2020 Glastonbury Carnival, until 2021. More Info

Glastonbury Town Council made a statement on recent breaches of social distancing legislation. More Info

Over 150 delivery requests were made this week using the form on this website. A big thank you to all our volunteers.

National

  • Boris Johnson says it is too soon to ease the lockdown. Speaking outside Downing Street after spending time recuperating at Chequers, the prime minister said although he acknowledged the pressure to relax the rules, he highlighted that this was also a moment of “maximum risk”. He said: “This is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle [coronavirus] to the floor, and so it follows that this is the moment of opportunity. This is the moment when we can press home our advantage. It is also the moment of maximum risk, because I know that there will be many people looking now at our apparent success and beginning to wonder whether now is the time to go easy on those social distancing measures.”
  • The NHS will restart some vital services, including cancer care, from tomorrow, health secretary Matt Hancock says, as he admitted the government has a “lot of work” to do to hit its 100,000 a day testing target. Some 29,058 tests had been carried out in England, Scotland and Wales in the 24 hours up to 9am on Saturday, according to the latest figures, suggesting the Government is way off its 100,000 a day target set for this Thursday. But Hancock claimed the government was “broadly where we expected to be” in terms of testing capacity but admitted there was a lot of work to do to hit the 100,000 a day goal.
  • A further 360 people have died in UK hospitals in the last 24 hours after contracting Covid-19, representing a dip in the daily number of fatalities. It means that so far 21,092 people have died in UK hospitals to date after testing positive for the virus. The figure does not include those who have died in care homes so the true coronavirus death toll is likely to be significantly higher. The 360 daily death toll is down from 413 yesterday.
  • The families of NHS and social care staff who die during their coronavirus work will get payments worth £60,000, health secretary Matt Hancock has announced. The government is looking at what can be done to help the families of other frontline workers who have died during the crisis, he says. So far, 82 NHS and 16 social care workers have died during the pandemic, he added.
  • Firms will be able to get loans worth up to £50,000, chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced, as part of a ‘bounce back’ scheme for businesses with 100% government backing. Companies will be able to get loans worth up to 25% of turnover, with a maximum payment of £50,000, he told the Commons. The government will pay the interest for the first 12 months, he says. And the government will back them 100%. He describes them as “bounce back” loans, and he says people will be able to apply from Monday next week. There will be no forward-looking eligibility test, he says.
  • Children are falling ill with a new and potentially fatal combination of symptoms apparently linked to Covid-19, including a sore stomach and heart problems. The children affected appear to have been struck by a form of toxic shock syndrome. Some have been left so seriously unwell that they have had to be treated in intensive care. At least one has undergone extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment, which is used when someone’s life is at risk because they can no longer breathe for themselves.
  • The names of some of the experts on the scientific group advising the UK government’s response to the coronavirus crisis will be published “shortly”, the government’s chief scientific adviser has said. It comes after the Guardian revealed the involvement of the prime minister’s chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings, in meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). Cummings’ attendance and participation in the group’s meetings raised questions about the independence of its scientific advice. After mounting pressure on Downing Street to disclose more details about the group – whose membership and advice the government has kept secret – Sir Patrick Vallance told a briefing for science journalists that the identities of the experts are usually revealed after the emergency is over, and that had also been the advice for the coronavirus crisis.

National updates from https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/27/uk-coronavirus-live-news-boris-johnson-back-at-work-amid-talk-of-easing-lockdown

International

  • More than 3 million people around the world are now confirmed to have been infected with the Sars-Cov-2 virus, according to a tally kept by researchers at Johns Hopkins university. The worst-affected country is by far the US, which with 972,969 cases alone counts for almost a third of the global total.
  • Vaccines formore than 13 million people have been delayed because of the outbreak, the World Health Organization says. The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says vaccination drives against polio, measles, cholera, HPV, yellow fever and meningitis are affected.
  • Italy reported 333 new deaths, a slightly accelerated increase compared to the previous 24 hours; up by 73. The number of people currently infected with the virus fell by 290 to 105,813. Italy has recorded 199,414 coronavirus cases to date.
  • Mexico has managed “to tame” its coronavirus outbreak, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said, despite widespread suspicions that Covid-19 cases are being undercounted. Mexico reported its first Covid case in late February and has now registered 1,351 deaths and 14,677 infections.
  • WhatsApp claimed to have cut viral messages by 70% after introducing a limit on the number of people to whom users could forward messages. WhatsApp introduced the limit earlier this month amid claims that its service was contributing to the spread of misleading information about coronavirus.
  • Many shops outside shopping malls are reopening in the Czech Republic as the government brings forward its five-stage lockdown exit plan. The UK government is understood to be closely studying the country’s approach as it seeks a route out of its own lockdown.
  • Switzerland also began to ease its lockdown, with dentists, hairdressers and massage salons are among the services once again receiving customers. Most shops, schools and food markets will follow suit from 11 May, followed by vocational schools and universities from 8 June.
  • Afghanistan recorded its biggest one-day rise in cases, triggered by a continued surge of transmission in Kandahar, as the health ministry warns two critical weeks lie ahead.

International updates from https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/27/coronavirus-live-news-boris-johnson-back-in-number-10-as-trump-denies-he-plans-to-fire-health-secretary