Boris Johnson has been in power for a year, is he delivering on the goals set out in his first speech?

Christopher Giles
BBC Reality Check

Image source, Reuters

Kayleigh McEnany, President Trump’s press secretary, has said that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden stopped all testing during the swine flu epidemic in the US.

The swine flu outbreak occurred from 2009 to 2010 when Mr Biden was vice-president in Barack Obama’s administration.

It’s a criticism that President Trump has also levelled at Mr Obama. “They had a very big failure with swine flu. A very big failure,” Mr Trump said in March.

So, did they stop all testing?

The first case of swine flu in the US was detected in April 2009.

From April to 24 July, there had been 43,771 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) had asked states to report the results of testing to track the spread of the disease in the early stages of the outbreak.

It’s true that after this point, the CDC stopped its monitoring process.

This followed a decision by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 16 July that it would no longer issue reports on the number of cases worldwide confirmed by testing.

The WHO explained this by saying: “The increasing number of cases in many countries with sustained community transmission is making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for countries to try and confirm them through laboratory testing”

However, it is not accurate to say that all testing in the United States was subsequently stopped.

The CDC recommended that people who were hospitalised with flu symptoms and those pregnant or with weakened immune systems receive a test.

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Reality Check

As we reported earlier Health Secretary Matt Hancock was challenged in the Commons by his opposite number in Labour Jonathan Ashworth over comments from the Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance.

Sir Patrick had said that the government’s advisory group Sage had recommended in the middle of March (he thought this was either 18 March or 16 March) that the “remainder” of measures to fight coronavirus should be introduced "as soon as possible".

So when exactly did the lockdown start in the UK?

Mr Hancock said: “The 16 March is the day when I came to this house and said that all unnecessary social contact should cease - that is precisely when the lockdown was started.”

The beginning of lockdown has usually been dated to the evening of 23 March when Boris Johnson addressed the nation and people were told to avoid leaving home and all non-essential shops were closed.

In fact, Mr Hancock has previously said that is when lockdown began.

In a debate in the Commons on 2 June, he noted that daily death figures were “lower than at any time since lockdown began on 23 March”.

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Reality Check

Jonathan Ashworth also took the opportunity to ask Mr Hancock about contact tracing in England.

“Only 71% of people are being contacted. And not the 80% that we were promised,” he said.

He was referring to the figures for the proportion of people identified as being close contacts of somebody with coronavirus who have been contacted.

Sage, which advises the government, has said, external that at least 80% of contacts would need to isolate for the test and trace system to be effective.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer pointed out in parliament yesterday that that figure has fallen every week.

The first figures we had, external were for the period 28 May to 10 June, when it was 90.6%. It had indeed fallen every week since then until the figure of 70.8% for 25 June to 1 July.

We had fresh figures today - the decline was halted in the latest figures for 2 to 8 July, with a figure of 71.1%. But that’s still well below 80%.

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More on the US move to start withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO).

David Nabarro, the WHO special envoy for Covid-19, says the US decision to leave will hit the body's finances.

Dr Nabarro told the BBC the WHO is "underfunded."

WHO gets its money from mandatory and voluntary contributions, paid both by member states and a wide range of private bodies.

The US was due to cover more than 20% of the organisation's mandatory contributions in 2020 - none of which has been paid.

The WHO has outstanding balances from many other member states too. As of 30 June, it had received less than 60% of its mandatory contributions for this year.

But it could be the voluntary contributions that really matter, as the figures for 2018 show they made up the vast majority of WHO funding.

These payments amounted to more than $2bn in that year. The US was the biggest contributor, paying around 12%. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made up another 10% of voluntary funding.

Voluntary contributions have become increasingly important over the years, and they could become more so as the US pulls out.

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We’ve had the latest figures from Public Health England showing the number of coronavirus outbreaks in schools.

The figures, external are actually for “acute respiratory outbreaks” but it’s reasonably likely that they will be Covid-19.

In the week ending 23 June there were 40 such outbreaks in “educational settings”, which was down from 49 the week before, but the second highest figure of the year, reflecting the increasing number of pupils in schools.

That compares with 58 outbreaks in care homes, 13 in hospitals and 43 in workplaces.

Reality Check

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: "We’ve been rolling out over 200,000 laptops for children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds."

In April the government announced it would provide free laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers to enable disadvantaged children to access remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

The devices are available for care leavers, children with a social worker and disadvantaged Year 10 pupils.

On 9 June, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told the House of Commons that 230,000 computers would be given out under the scheme by the end of the month.

The latest update , externalon the scheme, released by the Department for Education on Wednesday, showed that as of 30 June 202,212 laptops and tablets had been delivered along with 47,416 4G wireless routers.

Almost a quarter of laptops and tablets were delivered or dispatched in the last week meaning that many children have waited two and a half months from the announcement of the scheme to receive them.