The UK has approved the resumption of tests into whether a controversial malaria drug can be used to treat coronavirus.

Regulators say, external hydroxychloroquine and a similar drug, chloroquine, can be given to healthcare workers in a clinical study to test the theory.

Recruitment to the COPCOV trial, external was paused earlier this year due to concerns about the drug's side-effects. An influential article had found it increases the risk of death in coronavirus patients, but the article has since been retracted over data concerns.

Although other studies suggest hydroxychloroquine is not a life-saver for people who are already ill with coronavirus, researchers are keen to continue exploring whether it might prevent infections.

The COPCOV trial will see chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine or a placebo given to more than 40,000 healthcare workers from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America.

Read more here.

Reacting to Boris Johnson's speech this morning, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says: "We're not going to argue against a recovery plan, but the focus has to be on jobs.

"People are likely to lose their jobs in huge numbers in coming months, but we need laser-like focus on preserving those jobs.

"The prime minister promised a new deal, but there's not much that's new, and it's not much of a deal.

"We're facing an economic crisis, the biggest we've seen in a generation and the recovery needs to match that."

Image source, Getty Images

Hello and thanks for following our coverage of the pandemic. Here are some of the latest developments from around the world if you're just joining us:

• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a £5bn ($6.15bn) plan to bolster the UK economy, with a focus on infrastructure development. The funding would go towards projects like hospital maintenance works, school building and improvements to road and rail networks - further details will be announced next week
• The UK's first full local lockdown has been announced in Leicester, with stricter measures imposed in the city because of a rise in coronavirus cases
• Several US states are backtracking on the easing of lockdown restrictions as cases surge in areas of the country
• Trials of the controversial anti-malarial drug taken by US President Donald Trump to try to prevent catching coronavirus are to be resumed. UK regulators say hydroxychloroquine and a similar drug chloroquine can be given to healthcare workers in a clinical study to test the theory.

Image source, Getty Images

Medical startup AnGes says it has begun Japan's first human testing of a possible coronavirus vaccine.

The jab is based on DNA technology, a method that stimulates immune responses in patients ad is easier to mass produce.

The trials will run at Osaka City University Hospital until July 31 next year, the company said., external

It comes as human tests begin on an alternative vaccine in India. Nearly 150 are in development worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, external, as countries race to find a cure.

Image source, Getty Images

The CBI praises Boris Johnson's speech as laying "strong foundations", but urges the government to go further.

The business lobby group's director general, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, welcomes plans to upgrade and decarbonise transport, the improvements to schools, hopsitals, and prisons, and the promise to cut red tape on planning.

But, she adds: “Foundations are there to be built on. More is needed to prevent the uneven scarring unemployment leaves on communities."

Dame Carolyn calls for more detail on guaranteeing apprenticeships "so providers are ready", and says businesses would like further wage support to protect jobs and programmes for future skills in high potential areas such as digital, low carbon and health.

She says: "The reality is that longer-term plans will falter without continued help for firms still in desperate difficulty.

"Government intervention so far has saved countless jobs, yet anxious months for many still lie ahead. The focus on rescuing viable firms cannot slip while the UK looks to recovery, or earlier efforts could be wasted.”

Reality Check

The government said, external in advance of the prime minister's speech that Boris Johnson would be announcing £1.5bn would be made available for hospital maintenance and construction, the removal of mental health dormitories and increasing A&E capacity.

In the end he didn't mention this figure in the speech, but the government has confirmed that it is still happening.

It would be part of the pot of money known as the capital budget. This spending is the money we use to build new hospitals or fix existing ones. It is also spent on new equipment, such as MRI machines.

This spending was cut between 2010-11 – when the Conservatives entered power – and 2017-18 by about 7% in England, according to the Health Foundation.

This was because the NHS was focusing its resources on day-to-day running of the health service, such as staff pay. However, recent announcements have seen spending refocus on capital projects.

In the Spring Budget 2020, the Department of Health and Social Care’s capital budget increased by £1.1bn, taking the annual budget to £8.2bn.

The department has said that the £1.5bn announced today is all "new" money - that is on top of the earlier £1.1bn.

It should also be seen against an existing backlog of £6.5bn already needed to fix problems in NHS buildings.

Image source, Reuters

Boris Johnson has just finished outlining his vision to rebuild the UK after the coronavirus crisis.

He was keen to describe the plans as a "New Deal", referencing the plans of Depression-era American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who launched one of largest, most expensive US government programmes after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

Here are the main points:

• Johnson said the government must assess its handling of the coronavirus crisis, saying: "There must be time to learn the lessons and we will."
• He reiterated his plan from the election manifesto to recruit 20,000 police officers, as well as "ending the lunacy that stops us deporting violent criminals"
• He said he wants to "build back greener and build a more beautiful Britain" by planting 30,000 hectares of trees to "enchant and re-energise the soul"
• He pledged to build “fantastic new homes” by introducing radical planning reforms, as well as help younger people get on the housing ladder
• The UK should set a goal for producing the world’s first zero emissions long haul, passenger plane, he said, adding that the country can be a “science super power”
• He promised the government will offer an “opportunity guaranteed” for every person to have an apprenticeship or in-work placement.

The SNP is criticising the UK prime minister's announcement as a "failure of ambition" that "completely ignores Scotland's needs".

Earlier, Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said there needed to be an investment of £80bn for a post-Covid recovery.

The SNP's leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, reiterates the call from his boss, saying more financial powers needed to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

"The Tories are putting Scotland's recovery at risk," he says. "Yet again, Boris Johnson has fallen woefully short on his promises with this failure of ambition that completely ignores Scotland's needs.

"This recycled money falls far short of the huge investment that the UK requires to secure a strong recovery and it pales in comparison to the bold action being taken in other countries.

“The pandemic has caused an unprecedented economic crisis – and that must be met with an unprecedented response."

Boris Johnson is asked about the level of investment in the West Midlands, where he has been speaking, and he pledges that the area will get "a huge investment" and he would be "amazed if it wasn't well more than £3bn".

He says the proposals are about "creating the conditions for long-term increases in productivity and prosperity", repeating what he said in his speech about UK companies not being productive enough.

"We take too long to get things done, and it costs the taxpayer too much to get things done. I do think this is the moment to do it."

He says he is a glass half-full sort of person and he "believes profoundly that we will get through" this crisis and "we'll get through this very well".

That was the final question for Boris Johnson before leaving the lectern in Dudley.

Asked again about tax changes, Boris Johnson won't reveal his governments plans.

He says: "You know where my instincts are... to cut taxes wherever we possibly can.

"But we have a generational challenge and we have to take the country forward".

The PM says his "massive programme of investment" is the right direction, but reiterates the need for a "dynamic private sector" with a "fiscal environment that has got to be as competitive as it can possibly be".

But, again, he says you have to wait for the chancellor to announce tax plans.

Asked about those people who may be against his plans to "build, build, build", Mr Johnson says the UK "has got the space and the opportunity... to do things better and bolder and to do things faster, and that is what we are going to do".

"I can imagine there will be some people who reject this or that but there always are.

"We need pace and this is the moment to inject that pace into the ambition of the government."

Image source, Getty Images

The PM is asked next about whether there will be any more support for businesses, which are already struggling and facing further lockdowns like in Leicester.

Mr Johnson says the country can be immensely proud of the "way we have stood up and put our arms around the workforce".

He says the situation in Leicester, where there is a local lockdown, will be kept "under constant review" to endure that people "won't be penalised" for doing the right thing.

He says 11 million people have received support already from the government, with £22bn spent on the furlough scheme.

Image source, AFP

The next question is what the PM's plan are for jobs, especially if he will extend the furlough scheme - covering nine million people - past October.

Boris Johnson says the government doesn't know what the "full economic impact is going to be", but says he will do "everything we can to get this economy moving".

He refers back to his speech, saying he is putting forward the "most radical, boldest and ambitious" plan of his political lifetime.

And he says it will be the "bedrock for the private sector with all its ingenuity to invest and come up with new jobs and businesses".

But the PM says he will "keep it under constant review and if we have to go further we certainly will".

Johnson is also asked whether he will stick to his manifesto pledge on not raising taxes.

"Wait to see what the chancellor has to say in the course of next few weeks or months," he replies.

Image source, AFP

Robert Peston from ITV asks how confident the prime minister is that as the job support schemes end, he will be able to keep unemployment below three million people.

“Of course we face a real, real crisis and we have to deal with it,” Mr Johnson says.

He says the government will deal with it in the "most energetic possible way”.

"I'm not going to pretend this is going to be without real, real difficulty," he continues, but says he's not going to put a number on potential unemployment figures "because I can't at this stage."

Instead, he says: "What we can do is put in the investment now, get the plans going, get the projects under way".

Chris Mason
Political Correspondent

The prime minister loves a big, historical comparison.

He is a keen student of Winston Churchill - and has even written a book about him.

Over the last few days, the comparisons the government has sought to draw have been with former American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his "New Deal."

As my colleagues at Reality Check point out, the plan set out today is a tiddler compared to what FDR did, and a fair chunk of it is re-announcing what we already knew the government was planning.

But Boris Johnson is attempting to set out in a broader context the government's vision - and his pride in saying he wants to spend a lot to revitalise the economy and haul it out of the doldrums.

Mr Johnson is now taking questions from journalists. The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg asks how the proposals, which amount to £100 per person, will help the country recover from the crisis.

The PM says it's "a massive programme overall".

He says the reason the government can do it now is it has managed "prudently" and it's the right time to borrow.

"This is the moment to make the big, big long-term stake."

He denies that it's just a speeded-up version of the promises he made in the autumn as part of his election pledges - he says "it's also intensified and increased".

Asked about the local lockdown in Leicester, the PM says officials will be monitoring the situation and it will be eased once the situation has improved.

"I always said there would be local flare-ups and that we would deal with them locally."

Boris Johnson pledges that his government will "build, build, build".

He calls on the UK to "take the selflessness of health care workers, the public spirit and good humour of the entire population and brew them together with super human energy of Captain Tom bounding round his garden".

The PM adds: "Let's take that combination, that sprit, bottle it, swig it and I believe we will have found, if not magic potion, the right formula to get us through these dark times".

Johnson admits the government "won't get everything right the first time", but says it is "time to be ambitious and believe in Britain".

He ends by saying: "If we deliver this plan together, we will together build our way back to health, and not just bounce back but bounce forward".

The PM says that to achieve all of that "we must first get on with the hard and painstaking work of reopening our economy".

He says the government "wants to get back to life as normal, for as many as possible, as fast as possible".

But he warns ahead of 4 July lockdown easing measures that "the virus is out there still, circling like a shark on the water".

Mr Johnson says: "This government is not just committed to defeating coronavirus, but determined to use this crisis to tackle this country's great unresolved problems" - including building homes, improving the NHS and tackling the skills crisis.

Reality Check

Boris Johnson says: “It sounds like a prodigious amount of government intervention. It sounds like a New Deal. All I can say is if that is so, then that is how it is meant to sound.”

He is referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programme, which increased the state’s role in the economy and was designed to help the US recover from the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

Comparisons between government programmes in different countries, 90 years apart are very difficult to make - our economies have changed out of all recognition.

Also, there are strong arguments that it was Roosevelt’s structural reforms involving things like banking and social security that brought about the recovery.

Nonetheless, there have been a few valiant attempts at trying to get New Deal spending into some sort of modern context.

Remember that the New Deal ran over several years, with spending each year between about 5% and 7% of the total output of the economy (GDP) each year.

Boris Johnson’s £5bn would be less than a quarter of one per cent of GDP.

To get an idea of the scale of increased government spending in the 1930s, US federal government debt grew from 16% of GDP in 1929 to 44% of GDP in 1939.

Mr Johnson, who is speaking from Dudley in the West Midlands, says that town remains at the "cutting edge of green technology".

The government this summer will create a new science funding agency to back "high risk, high reward" projects, he pledges.

He says the UK should set the goal now of producing the world's first zero emissions, long haul, passenger plane.

"Though we are no longer a military super power, we can be a science super power. We must end the chasm between invention and application, which means a brilliant British discovery disappears to California."

The prime minister says that the "biggest and most immediate" economic challenge the UK faces is that some jobs won't come back after the crisis.

He says the government will offer an "opportunity guaranteed" for every person to have an apprenticeship or in-work placement.

Mr Johnson says he's aware his announcement sounds like a lot of government intervention or "a new deal".

He is referencing the New Deal policies of the Depression-era American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 launched one of the largest, most expensive US government programmes.

He says he is not a communist, but he believes it also the job of government to create the conditions for "free market enterprise".