Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

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The vicar who pressured Health Secretary Matt Hancock over a review of lockdown fines told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was "disappointing" to see the government row back on its offer to look into the matter.

After the prime minister's aide Dominic Cummings used childcare to justify a 260-mile trip during lockdown, the Rev Martin Poole from Brighton asked at the daily Downing Street briefing if that would mean other people fined for lockdown breaches who had been seeking childcare would see their penalties reviewed.

Mr Hancock told the briefing it was "a very good question" and that the government would "look at it", discuss it with the Treasury and make "an announcement from this podium". But later reports suggested that there would be no formal review, and Mr Hancock would just relay the concerns to the Treasury.

"I took him at his word. That was really nice to hear," said Mr Poole. "It’s a little disappointing to hear that they’ve rowed back on that."

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Later today, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will face questioning from a committee of MPs as he continues to face pressure over allegations that his closest adviser broke lockdown rules.

The video-conference hearing at 16:00 BST will be the first time he's faced the House of Commons Liaison Committee - the only committee of MPs that is able to question the prime minister - since he was elected in December with a majority of 80.

He's likely to face questioning about his government's handling of the pandemic, which has seen the UK experiencing the highest death toll in Europe.

We're also expecting more questions about his aide Dominic Cummings' 260-mile trip to County Durham during lockdown. More than 35 Conservative MPs have now called for Mr Cummings to resign or be fired.

Read the full story

The latest developments in the row over the UK prime minister Boris Johnson's chief adviser Dominic Cummings remain the focus of many of Wednesday's newspapers.

Several papers pick up on the dropping approval ratings of the PM as he maintains support for Cummings. But there is also a departure on other front pages to talk about the latest developments in the fight against the virus.

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Reality Check

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As the WHO has suspended trials of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, what is the confusion all about?

The BBC Reality Check team has looked into the drug - which has been touted by Donald Trump and Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro. El Salvador's president now claims most world leaders are taking it.

• Click here to read the full analysis

Good morning if you are just joining us in the UK, here are some of the latest developments:

• UK prime minister Boris Johnson will be questioned by senior MPs later amid continued calls for his top adviser to resign. That's at 16:30 BST (15:30 GMT)
• "Local lockdowns" will be introduced to tackle regional outbreaks of coronavirus in England in the future, says the UK health secretary
• The charity which runs the UK’s national domestic abuse helpline says visits to its website have spiked again during in the past two weeks
• South Korea has reported its biggest spike in cases in two months, as over two million school children return to the classroom
• Latin Americahas become the centre of the global pandemic. The region now has more daily reported cases than Europe and the US
• The US has now introduced its travel ban on foreign nationals who have been to Brazil in the last 14 days

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The shantytown of Villa Azul, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, was fenced off for 15 days on Monday. No one can enter or leave without special permission.

Around 3,000 people live in the neighbourhood, according to AFP. Barriers have gone up, and police are patrolling the perimeter.

There were at least 84 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Villa Azul on Monday, with more suspected infections. Around 350,000 people live in villas - roughly equivalent to a Brazilian favela - in the Argentine capital.

The wider city has been under a lockdown since March, with some limited movement allowed. It was recently extended until 7 June.

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As Brazil becomes the new epicentre of the pandemic, there are fears it will hit the country's indigenous population especially hard.

Vanderlecia Ortega dos Santos is a 32-year old nurse from the Witoto tribe and she is volunteering to provide help.

Her mask reads "indigenous lives matter."

Image source, Reuters

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On the outskirts of the city of Manaus, she's volunteering in a settlement of descendants from 35 different tribes. Among the several hundred families, she's monitoring for symptoms and giving guidance on how to stop the spread.

• Click here to see our full story on her work

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Oscar-winning Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón has backed calls to ensure domestic workers laid off during the Covid-19 pandemic continue to be paid.

"It is our responsibility as employers to pay their wages in this time of uncertainty," Cuarón said.

He won the best director Oscar in 2019 for Roma, a film casting a spotlight on Latin America's housekeepers.

Many of Mexico's 2.3 million domestic workers have been left without wages because of the outbreak.

Read our story here.

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Both countries have managed to bring the pandemic under control and are in talks over an agreement that would allow flights between the two to resume before normal International flights would be possible.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Wednesday said a draft blueprint on safe travel between the neighbours would be presented to the two governments in early June.

“It won’t be too long before we are ready,” she said.

Last year, 1.5 million Australians visited New Zealand, making it the most popular travel outbound destination.

Yogita Limaye
BBC India correspondent

Mumbai has long been described as a city always on the run. It sounds like a cliché, but as someone who has lived here most of my life, I can confirm it's true.

Even during the 2008 attack, on a day when there were active gunmen in south Mumbai, in other parts of the city, trains were running, millions went to work, and restaurants and offices remained open.

But Covid-19 has turned the city into a ghost town as a stringent lockdown remains in place with no easing of restrictions.

It has also left its medical infrastructure on the brink of collapse.

Click here to read the full story

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Singapore is giving out free disposable face masks to all residents and people can pick them up at around 400 vending machines across the city.

It's the third time the state is handing out masks to residents but the first time it's done via vending machines.

Singapore had initially managed to keep the virus in check but in recent weeks has seen an explosion of cases among its foreign workers taking the toll beyond 32,000 cases, the highest number in all of South East Asia.

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The president of El Salvador says "most world leaders" are taking hydroxychloroquine - the unproven drug President Trump said he was taking to "ward off" the virus.

Hydroxychloroquine is primarily a malaria medication. The WHO recently suspended trials of it as a coronavirus treatment because of safety concerns.

On Sunday, Mr Trump said he was no longer using it - but today Nayib Bukele said he, and other leaders, were taking it.

“I use it as a prophylaxis [prevention], President Trump uses it as a prophylaxis, most of the world’s leaders use it as a prophylaxis," he said.

• Coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine: What do we know?
• El Salvador's incoming leader promises 'new era'

Image source, Reuters

As the UK begins the slow process of reopening some businesses and returning to work, the BBC has been given unprecedented access to a hospital in the heart of London, for one week.

Medical staff at the Royal London Hospital say a rise in cases is inevitable as members of the public have more contact with each other.

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If we define Central America as the seven countries between Mexico and Colombia, Panama, the richest country in the region, is the worst affected in terms of cases, deaths, and deaths per million of population.

1. Panama (73 deaths per million people)

2. Honduras (19)

3. El Salvador (6)

4. Belize (5)

5. Nicaragua (5)

6. Guatemala (4)

7. Costa Rica (2)

But although reported deaths are relatively low in most countries, the impact has been huge. Lockdowns and curfews are in place across the region, and remittances - that is, workers sending money home from wealthier countries - have dried up.

• How Covid-19 is threatening Central America

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Today we're hearing that Japan is putting together another stimulus package worth about $1.1 trillion.

If you struggle to grasp the enormity of these kinds of numbers you're not alone.

The cratering of the global economy, the resulting hundreds of millions of people out of work and the trillions of dollars pumped into global economies by governments and central banks to help ease the impact of the unprecedented lockdowns is enough to boggle anyone's mind.

But let's try to put it into some sort of context; the more than a trillion dollars that Japan looks set to pump into its economy - plus the $1.1tn dollar stimulus package announced by Tokyo just last month - it all equates to around $17,400 for each of Japan's 126.5 million people.

And governments across Asia-Pacific are unveiling similarly huge emergency spending plans.

For example, just yesterday tiny Singapore unveiled its fourth stimulus budget, taking the total amount the city state is injecting into its coronavirus-battered economy to $65.4bn. That equates to almost $11,200 for each of its 5.8 million people.

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Human Rights Watch are warning that the Venezuelan healthcare system is not prepared for the pandemic and that this will be both a danger for the Venezuelans as well as the entire region.

Venezuela has 1,211 confirmed infections and 11 deaths but HRW says the real number is "almost certainly much higher" due to limited reliable testing and a lack of transparency.

The situation in the country "may drive people to try to leave the country, further straining the health systems of neighboring countries and imperiling regional health more broadly,” the NGO cites Kathleen Page of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as saying.

Colombian president Iván Duque has called the situation in Venezuela "a time bomb".

An Indian passenger who flew on a domestic flight to the southern city of Coimbatore is in quarantine after testing positive for Covid-19.

He was among the first lot of flyers to travel within India as domestic flights resumed on Monday after two months.

IndiGo airlines' operating crew have been grounded for 14 days and are alerting other passengers aboard the flight, the company said in a statement quoted by local media. It added that he, along with other flyers, were all wearing face masks, face shields and gloves.

India's aviation minister told local media that more than 41,000 people had flown on Monday and Tuesday.

But there was chaos and long queues reported from airports on Monday as hundreds of flights were cancelled last minute, leading to confusion.

India has just over 140,000 confirmed cases and 4,167 deaths.

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Laura Bicker
BBC News

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South Korea has reported its biggest spike in coronavirus cases in two months, just as over two million school children return to the classroom. Forty new cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the last 24 hours which is the sharpest increase in daily infections in 49 days.

At a high school in Seoul, students are lining up to get their temperature checked. They’re all standing at least a metre apart.

The temperature sensor is so sensitive that the alarm goes off after it detects a hot flask in a student’s bag.

Most of these teenage pupils haven’t seen their classmates in five months. Several jump excitedly at the sight of a friend, but they are stopped from hugging.

The latest spike in cases has put teachers on edge and they are being ever more vigilant. Health officials have double-checked the infection control measures being taken inside classrooms and all students have to fill in an app to prove they have no symptoms of Covid-19 before they are allowed back at school.

This country has been praised for its response to the pandemic and fewer than 270 people have died.

But even here, where each case is aggressively tracked and traced, they are struggling to prevent clusters of infection cropping up across the country.

The Colombian sports minister has said football teams can begin training in June, with the aim of restarting the professional leagues by August.

Individual training will be allowed from 8 June. Group training is scheduled for July, with matches - behind closed doors - pencilled in for August.

Professional football across South America is currently suspended. Colombia has been less affected by the virus than some of its neighbours, with 23,000 cases and almost 800 deaths.

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Brazil did not confirm its first Covid-19 case until 26 February - more than a month after the first virus case was recorded outside China.

The patient was a 61-year-old man, external who had returned to Sao Paulo, the most populous city in Brazil, from Lombardy in northern Italy. Although research has suggested the virus actually arrived earlier, the number of deaths certainly did not explode until April.

By 11 April, though, Brazil was the first country in the southern hemisphere to pass 1,000 deaths. By 17 May it had more cases than Spain and Italy, and a week later the US had banned anyone with a recent travel history to Brazil.

In March, President Jair Bolsonaro was still comparing the virus to a "little flu", while claiming the media was "deceiving" people. This chart shows how cases escalated in Brazil, compared to the flattening line in China

Image source, Our World In Data