Image source, AFP

We've seen a few stories since the pandemic began of people connecting with loved ones across balconies, from gardens outside care homes or just shouting across the street.

Now in Belgium one crane operator has taken things up a notch or two by offering his services to families separated by multiple storeys, external, reports Associated Press.

After losing his job, Tristan Van den Bosch drove his crane to homes in several towns and transported people to their relatives' windows.

“It’s been seven long weeks that I haven’t been able to see her,” one woman told AP after being lifted up to see her 88-year-old aunt in a care home. “It’s all quite emotional.”

Mr Van den Bosch isn't the only person to have the bright idea though. In Figueira da Foz, Portgual, two retirement homes offered the same service to their 150 residents earlier this month.

Image source, Jonathan Vargas

At the beginning of April, a long line of police cars snaked slowly around a hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with their blue lights flashing in the bright sun. It was a tribute, they said, to the healthcare workers risking their lives to treat patients with Covid-19.

But for Jonathan Vargas Andres, an ICU nurse treating Covid patients in that hospital, these grand gestures feel somewhat empty.

Jonathan is an undocumented worker who came to the US under the Daca "Dreamers" programme, and in the next few weeks he'll find out whether the country that he's risking his life to protect will decide to deport him.

"I try not to think about it because if I think about it for too long I get tired," Jonathan told the BBC. "I've basically had to zone it out for my own health."

Daca - or the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals is an Obama-era ruling from 2012 that shielded young people who were brought to the US illegally as children from deportation.

In 2017, President Trump decided to end the Daca programme. The Supreme Court is now considering a series of cases that challenge Trump's decision.

Read more about Jonathan and the Daca case.

Image source, Getty Images

The UK government did not receive “bad advice” on the risk to care home residents at the start of the pandemic, health minister Edward Argar has said in an interview with the BBC.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was criticised for apparent inaccuracies in his statements on the issue to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. Office for National Statistics figures show at least 40% of deaths in England and Wales occurred in care homes.

Argar was asked whether the government had decided not to change its care home guidance at the same time as Italy because of poor advice from the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

He said: “I completely refute the assertion that it was bad advice, or it was poor advice.

“If you think back to February or March, every day, we and scientists were learning something new about how it (the virus) behaved and that it didn’t always behave the same way in different countries."

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick has been taking calls from BBC Radio 5 Live listeners.

Q: Mark, a tenant renting a flat in London that the landlord wants to sell, asked why people should be allowed to view his home when he cannot have his family round to visit.

A: Jenrick said the government was trying to "discourage those viewings unless they are really serious", adding that landlords and estate agents should follow government guidelines on respecting social distancing rules.

He said landlords would be responsible for cleaning the surfaces of the property and that anyone who is shielding should not have people in their homes.

Q: A headteacher, also called Mark, asked how safe the planned reopening of schools was for students and staff.

A: Jenrick said reopening would "only go ahead if the evidence demonstrates that the rate of infection within the community remains under control".

Image source, EPA

Finland goes back to school, as France worries about the US getting vaccine priority. Here are some of the latest developments in Europe.

• In much of Europe children remain stuck at home under lockdown, but in Finland schools have reopened. The Finnish teachers’ union warns that it may not be totally safe for staff or children, however. Children are back in class, under social distancing rules, for two weeks before the summer break
• It would be "unacceptable" for French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi to give priority to the US market if it develops a Covid-19 vaccine, French Deputy Finance Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher says. Earlier, Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said "the US government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk"
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says he has double pneumonia and has given a grim description of his Covid-19 infection. He and his wife are in hospital. Mr Peskov called the virus “an absolute bloodsucker”, and said the hyperactive immune system “eats up your lungs”
• Germany has reported 933 new Covid-19 infections in the past 24 hours, making 172,239 in total. The Robert Koch Institute says 89 more people have died and the reproduction (R) rate has dropped to 0.8. Rates above 1.0 mean that on average one person infects more than one other
• In Montenegro there were clashes between police and hundreds of protesters angered by the arrest of a Serbian Orthodox bishop and seven priests suspected of violating the coronavirus lockdown

Sam Proffitt
BBC News

Image source, Pradeep Tomar

Antarctica is cut off from the rest of the world for months at a time - and there's not been a single case of coronavirus. So why are research teams there following isolation rules to combat the virus, when it's probably not even on the continent?

"A case of Covid-19 here could be disastrous," Pradeep Tomar, on the Indian base, told the BBC.

"So we are taking lockdown measures, too. It feels like we are isolated within the isolation."

If there was an outbreak it would be devastating. There's nowhere else to go, medical facilities are limited - and the likelihood of spreading it to others would be high.

But most of the team members are still more fearful for people back home than for themselves.

"I truly wish I could serve my country in this time of need," Tomar said. "Nobody has ever witnessed something like the ongoing crisis. I hope to see the same world again when we go home."

Read the full story

Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

The idea that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory continues to be pushed by some politicians, despite a lack of any scientific evidence.

A senior member of India’s government, the transport minister Nitin Gadkari, said in TV interview that “this is not a natural virus, it is an artificial virus… this is a virus from a laboratory.”

His remarks follow recent suggestions by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo that the virus came from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan - an accusation that state media in China has strongly rejected.

Scientific analysis indicates the virus came from animals, and was not man-made.

The BBC's science editor, Paul Rincon, reports that there's currently no evidence that any research institute in Wuhan was the source of Sars-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19)

A US study of the coronavirus genome published in March found no signs it had been engineered, external.

Image source, Reuters

As European countries begin to consider easing travel restrictions over the summer, Frankfurt Airport has released its passenger numbers for April.

There were 97% fewer passengers for the month compared to the previous year. Similar downturns have been recorded at other major international airports.

Image source, Getty Images

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said it is “pretty clear now” that community testing for the virus should not have been abandoned by the government on 12 March.

Now chairman of the Health Select Committee, Hunt told the BBC on Thursday that he did not want to blame individuals, but asked why the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) “didn’t model the South Korean test, track and trace approach that we are now adopting right at the beginning?"

“The Government was given two very extreme options, the sort of extreme lockdown we’re just coming out of, or kind of mitigated herd immunity," he said.

“That middle way, the South Korean route, wasn’t modelled.”

Image source, Getty Images

Burundi has expelled its World Health Organization (WHO) representative and three other health experts, giving the team 48 hours to leave the east African country.

Burundi's foreign ministry did not give a reason for the expulsion.

The government there is facing criticism for going ahead with its election on 20 May amid the coronavirus pandemic. At rallies for presidential candidates, measures to contain infection are not observed.

The country has reported 15 cases including one death, but the humanitarian organisation International Crisis Group has questioned the official figures.

Image source, Reuters

The supreme court of the US state Wisconsin has overturned a coronavirus stay-at-home order issued by the state's democratic governor - with one justice comparing the restrictions to a "prison regime".

Governor Tony Evers had extended the order to May 26, but in a 4 - 3 ruling the state's top court reversed the extension, siding with Republican state politicians.

“This comprehensive claim to control virtually every aspect of a person’s life is something we normally associate with a prison, not a free society governed by the rule of law,” Justice Daniel Kelly, who is on the court's conservative wing, wrote.

Evers warned that the court's decision risked undoing "all the work we have done and all the sacrifices Wisconsinites have made over these past few months".

Public opinion across the US is divided over whether or not to reopen schools and businesses as the pandemic continues.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious diseases doctor, has warned that reopening the country too soon could trigger fresh outbreaks of the virus.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick is taking calls from BBC Radio 5 Live listeners this morning, beginning in about five minutes.

Click here to listen live on BBC Sounds.

Image source, Getty Images

Uber and Addison Lee in the UK have announced that perspex screens will be fitted in a number of their vehicles to protect occupants from coronavirus.

Addison Lee will install them in its 4,000 vehicles and Uber will pilot the safety measures in 400 cars. Both firms say they are distributing free safety equipment to workers.

Taxi drivers are included in a list of occupations with disproportionately high Covid-19 death rates, compiled by the Office for National Statistics. Many passengers too will be anxious about the risk of infection in taxis, now that increased movement outside is permitted under eased lockdown in England.

Barbara Plett Usher
BBC News, Washington

US security agencies have said hackers backed by the Chinese government are trying to steal American research dealing with the response to the Covid-19 crisis.

The statement comes amid increased tensions between the two countries over the source of the outbreak.

The statement said the FBI was investigating digital break-ins by cyber-actors linked to China who were trying to steal data on vaccines, treatments and testing.

It warned scientists and public health officials to be on the lookout, but didn’t identify the institutions that had been targeted. The US authorities have long accused the Chinese government of cyber-espionage, which Beijing denies.

But this warning coincides with a much broader surge in cyber-theft and attacks by nations seeking advantage in the pandemic. Last week the US and Britain issued a joint statement about cyber threats to medical research, but didn’t name a specific country.

Hugh Pym
BBC News Health Editor

An antibody test for coronavirus has long been seen as an important part of the toolkit for plotting a route out of lockdown restrictions.

If workers have already had the virus and gained immunity they are safe to go to work - especially health and social care staff.

Recent attempts to buy antibody tests in the UK have floundered because they have been deemed unreliable.

Sources say this latest test device, produced by Roche, is the first to offer serious potential.

Talks are under way with the government over whether it can be produced at scale and at a reasonable cost.

Understandably, Whitehall sources are not giving much away because they don't want to undermine their negotiating hand.

Image source, Getty Images

A test to find out whether people have been infected with coronavirus in the past has been approved by health officials in England.

Public Health England called the antibody test, developed by Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, a "very positive development".

The blood test looks for antibodies created by the immune system when someone is infected by the virus. Antibodies usually offer some level of immunity, for a variable amount of time. Until now, officials were unsure over the reliability of these type of tests.

Professor John Newton, the national coordinator of the UK coronavirus testing programme, said: "Such a highly specific antibody test is a very reliable marker of past infection.

"This in turn may indicate some immunity to future infection, although the extent to which the presence of antibodies indicates immunity remains unclear."

Read more here

Image source, Getty Images

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the world's top Twenty 20 cricket league, drawing the best cricketers from India and across the world. Its season usually takes place between March and June.

But for the first time in its history, the IPL was suspended indefinitely in April - weeks after India went into lockdown to curb Covid-19. Almost a month on, and we are no closer to having a possible date for the IPL this year.

There's been some chatter of restricting the league to only Indian players due to international travel restrictions, but not all teams have warmed to the idea, external. Sri Lanka offered to host the IPL last month but there's been no update on whether the league - if held - will be played outside India.

Cancelling the massively popular tournament would also mean a financial hit of up to $530m (£434m) for India's cricket board, an official told PTI news agency last week.

Image source, Getty Images

Sydney cafes and restaurants are reopening - but only 10 guests are allowed in at a time and they have to maintain social distancing. Don't fancy sitting in a half-empty restaurant?

Five Dock Dining in Sydney has come up with a solution: cardboard cutouts to fill the empty seats, along with background noise simulating the chatter of other guests to make up for the missing ambience.

Just don't ask them to pass the salt.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

A leading UK economist has said he expects GDP to drop by 25% in the second quarter, as the damage wrought by the virus and lockdown measures becomes fully clear.

The economy shrank by 2% in the first three months of 2020 after just a few days of lockdown, with chancellor Rishi Sunak pointing to “a significant recession”.

Dr Garry Young, of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, warned that the economic decline will worsen significantly in the second quarter, but he said there was a “reasonable chance of a bounce back” if government schemes to keep businesses afloat work.

“The figures on Wednesday pointed to 2%, which many people seemed to be alarmed at. But you haven’t seen anything yet,” Young told the BBC.

“Our estimate is, GDP will fall by about 25% in the current quarter. Over the whole year it will depend on how quickly the lockdown is eased.”

Image source, Getty Images

Coronavirus has dominated our minds, and much of the world's media, for weeks now. But a global pandemic doesn't simply put a stop to the many other crises threatening humankind.

A renewed nuclear arms race, the ticking clock on Britain's Brexit negotiations, and, of course, climate change - just three of the threats that have been forced to take a back seat since the coronavirus spread.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus has taken a closer look at five looming problems.

Read more about these threats and how governments, in some cases, are using the distraction of coronavirus to pursue long-held ambitions.