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Today it has been brought to you by: Andreas Illmer, Anna Jones, Alice Cuddy, Krutika Pathi, Jay Savage, Thom Poole, Lauren Turner, Sophie Williams, Josh Cheetham, Francesca Gillett, Mary O'Connor and Max Matza.

Image source, Reuters

As we wind down our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, here's a final round-up of the key headlines in the UK this Wednesday evening.

• People in England will be able to visit loved ones living in care homes again, the government confirmed earlier. Care homes have been badly affected by the virus - with at least 20,000 care home residents in England and Wales dying with Covid-19 since the start of the outbreak
• Deaths linked to coronavirus in Scotland have fallen to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic, with just six registered last week. New figures from the National Records of Scotland showed the number of deaths falling for the twelfth week in a row
• Another 79 people are reported to have died with coronavirus in the UK, bringing the total death total to 45,502. There have been a further 560 confirmed cases of the virus since yesterday, bringing the national toll to 296,377, according to official figures, external
• Fitness Coach Joe Wicks has held the final session of PE with Joe, after starting the workouts 18 weeks ago for children stuck at home during the lockdown. Wicks, 33, who is known as the Body Coach, has raised £580,000 for the NHS through his online workouts and urged fans to "keep it up" as he ended his last session
• In Scotland, beauticians, nail salons and tattoo parlours were able to reopen today. All four nations of the UK are in charge of their own lockdown restrictions and beauty salons have already reopened in England and Northern Ireland
• A majority of British children struggled to continue learning at home during the lockdown, according to an Office for National Statistics report. It found that of the 52% who struggled, three-quarters of parents gave a lack of motivation as a reason
• Reduced staffing due to the coronavirus pandemic has meant there's a backlog of more than 400,000 passport applications in the UK, according to new figures

Image source, Getty Images

Hello and thank you for following our coverage of the global pandemic, brought to you by our team of reporters in London and around the world.

Here are some of the biggest global developments of the day:

• More than 15 million infections have now been confirmed worldwide, along with 618,000 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University
• The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that researchers are making good progress on developing a coronavirus vaccine, but their first use cannot be expected until early 2021
• America has ordered China to close its consulate in Houston by Friday, as US President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on China over the pandemic. Beijing has called the move "outrageous and unjustified"
• Elsewhere in America, Washington DC's mayor has strengthened the city’s mask mandate, now compelling residents to wear a face covering any time they leave their home. The nearby city of Baltimore also announced that anyone over the age of two must wear a mask whenever out in public
• Australia has seen its worst day yet in the pandemic, recording more than 500 new cases
• Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, has again tested positive for coronavirus, more than two weeks after he first revealed he had Covid-19
• Meanwhile restaurant owners and workers in South Africa are holding peaceful protests against the government's reimposed curfew and a ban on alcohol sales
• Two human rights charities warn that long periods of lockdown have escalated the exploitation of children in South and Southeast Asia, particularly girls. Plan International and Save the Children say nearly 10 million children may never return to school, even after the pandemic is over

Simon Jack
BBC Business Editor

The BBC has been speaking to Alison Rose, the head of the Royal Bank of Scotland which has just renamed itself the NatWest Group.

She warns that while the painful memories of the last great financial crisis had faded, the true extent of a new and graver threat to thousands of businesses was emerging.

"There are clearly tough times ahead. Not all businesses will survive and there are going to be losses," she said.

We got a glimpse of the potential scale of the losses earlier this year when the then-RBS reported a nine-fold (833%) increase in the amount of money it set aside for bad loans compared to the same period a year ago. Bad loans are loans which are unlikely to be paid back.

New accounting standards require companies to make their best guess of future bad loans - so RBS's best guess in the first quarter of this year was that bad loans would explode. We will get an update on their view next week.

Read more here.

A 64-year-old coronavirus patient who was not expected to survive has returned home and said he'll soon be "fit as a fiddle".

Ray Mwasaru ended up in an induced coma at Lister Hospital in Stevenage, where doctors told his wife he might only have hours left to live.

Eventually the mental health nurse made a good recovery and was clapped as he was moved out of intensive care.

Speaking at home in Marston Moretaine in Bedfordshire, he said: "I believe by next week I should be up and running around. I'll be fit as a fiddle."

Jack Goodman and Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Anti-disinformation team

Image source, Getty Images

Twitter has announced it’s banning thousands of accounts promoting QAnon, a baseless conspiracy theory that believes President Trump is battling a “deep state” of global elites involved in child trafficking.

Accounts linked to QAnon have also promoted misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic on Twitter, and other social media platforms, amplifying misleading content about Covid-19, particularly related to face coverings and vaccines.

In April, QAnon accounts helped make a fake story claiming that an early participant of a UK vaccine trial had died go viral.

Last month, a video uploaded by a well-known QAnon influencer which called the pandemic a “deep state hoax” manufactured by the Democratic Party to hamper President Trump’s re-election chances racked up millions of views.

Misleading memes making claims about the health risks of face masks and the dangers of a “Bill Gates-funded vaccine” are widely-shared in QAnon-themed Facebook groups and quickly find their way onto Twitter, Reddit and TikTok.

You can read more about QAnon here.

Image source, Reuters

Photos of tour boats operating at Niagara Falls, which sits on the US-Canada border, have illustrated the starkly different social distancing policies between the two countries.

Ferries operated from the Canadian side of the border, which normally can carry 700 tourists at a time, are only allowing six passengers per boat.

The US ferries are operating at 50% capacity, meaning customers are still crowded rather closely together as they strain to get a good view of the massive waterfalls.

“We actually took a picture of the [American] boat,” Julie Pronovost, a visitor from Quebec, told Reuters on Tuesday. “I don’t find that it’s very safe to be on a boat like that. It’s much better here.”

The US coronavirus outbreak is far worse than Canada's. On Tuesday, the US reported 57,777 new Covid-19 cases, compared with 786 in Canada.

Image source, Reuters

BBC OS

This empty table is being used to highlight the impact of coronavirus restrictions in South Africa, as part of a day of action to raise awareness of jobs lost in the tourist, hospitality and wine industries.

It’s 200 metres long and it was laid in Wellington, a small town outside Cape Town, next to a vineyard run by Petrus Bosman.

“The alcohol ban has not only affected our local wine sales in restaurants and retailers negatively, but the whole wine and tourism industry,” he told BBC OS.

Last week, South Africa introduced its second alcohol ban of the year and a night-time curfew to reduce the pressure on its healthcare system. Petrus, however, was not impressed with the renewed restrictions.

“We just feel that government could have consulted and worked in a more collaborative manner," said Petrus. "The future is uncertain and so are the dreams we have as a community."

Image source, Getty Images

There were 9,785 new infections recorded on Wednesday in Florida, according to health officials, raising the total number of coronavirus cases to 379,619.

There were an additional 139 deaths on Wednesday. The state has now recorded 5,345 deaths of residents, and over 100 deaths of non-residents.

According to the data, 47% of all deaths have occurred in long-term and elderly care homes.

Florida has the third highest level of infections out of any US state, coming behind California and New York.

Image source, Getty Images

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that researchers are making good progress on developing a coronavirus vaccine, but their first use cannot be expected until early 2021.

Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's emergencies programme told reporters that it was vital to "not cut corners on safety", even if this meant slowing the vaccine's development.

"We have to be able to look ourselves in the eyes, and we have to be able to look at our communities and ensure them that we have taken every precaution to make sure that these vaccines are safe and effective before we go giving them to general populations," said Dr Ryan. "In order to make that happen, we can shorten that time, but realistically, it is going to be the first part of next year before we start seeing people vaccinated."

He added that several potential vaccines were in phase 3 trials and none had failed in terms of safety or their ability to generate an immune response.

Maria McCann
BBC News Northern Ireland

Image source, Getty Images

A new £10.5m scheme to support the childcare sector in Northern Ireland will open for applications on Monday.

The Department of Education said the financial package would ensure as many providers as possible can reopen or remain open following the lockdown.

The Childcare Recovery Support scheme will be available for day care settings, playgroups and childminders.

An earlier support package set up by Stormont was scrapped following criticism for how it was implemented.

The new scheme will operate until 31 August and will be backdated to 1 July.

Read more here.

There have been nearly 300,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus so far in the UK and more than 45,500 people have died, government figures show.

Take a look at these three charts and read more here to find out the key figures of the pandemic in the UK.

Catherine Byaruhanga
BBC News, Kampala

Image source, AFP

Madagascar has reported another record day with 614 infections.

At one government hospital in Antananarivo, the director says they are already treating 46 patients and only have space for four more.

Another administrator at a different facility said they were constantly overwhelmed. The World Health Organisation representative in Madagascar has warned that hospitals are saturated even before the peak of the pandemic in the country is reached.

There are over 7,500 coronavirus cases in Madagascar nearly 80% of them were diagnosed in the past month. With the spike in positive results, the government reinstated a strict lockdown of the capital and surrounding areas.

On Monday, the Minister for Health wrote to development partners asking for equipment like testing kits, respirators and protective equipment for health workers. But there’s been push back from the government’s spokesperson who said it was not the minister’s place to make such a request.

There is a lot of promising news on vaccine research this week. Oxford University announced first results but it’s only one of around two dozen vaccines being tested on people in clinical trials - and there are around 140 others in development around the world.

Some of you have sent in questions around what a future vaccine can and can not do.

• Would a vaccine be 100% safe?

• What if the virus mutates?
• Do the normal flu vaccines have any effect at all?
• Can people with transplants take a vaccine?

Click here to read our health editor Michelle Roberts answering all those questions and more.

Image source, PA Media

New research has found more than half of British children struggled to continue learning at home while schools were shut during the lockdown.

Of the 52% who struggled, three-quarters of parents gave a lack of motivation as a reason, the Office for National Statistics research found.

It also showed wide disparities in what families were able to do.

Schools closed for most pupils at the end of March in England, Wales and Scotland, as the pandemic took hold. Some schools re-opened in England on or around 1 June for some year groups.

The ONS researchers assessed surveys of more than 12,000 people in Great Britain between 3 April and 7 June about their experiences of home-schooling during the coronavirus pandemic. There's more on the findings here.

Image source, Getty Images

• California, with more than 409,000 infections, has overtaken New York as the state with most confirmed cases. Florida, with nearly 370,000 cases is in third place
• The US government has agreed to a $1.95bn (£1.5bn) deal to purchase 100m doses of vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech once the medication is approved by US regulators
• Over 500 women have test positive at a federal prison in Texas for inmates with medical and mental health issues, in one of the largest outbreaks to yet occur in US prisons
• A coalition of African American mayors of major US cities formally called on state governors to repeal orders prohibiting them from enacting local policies to prevent the spread of Covid-19
• Thirteen elderly nuns - making up a third of a Roman Catholic convent outside Detroit - have died after contracting the virus

Image source, LA BRASSERIE DE LA COUR

Image source, LA BRASSERIE DE LA COUR

After reopening on 4 July, England's restaurants have had to introduce strict hygiene and social distancing measures to protect staff and customers from coronavirus.

But one restaurant in Buxton, Derbyshire, has taken its responsibilities to an entirely new level - by introducing mannequins to help keep their customers socially distanced while dining.

The smartly-dressed dummies are positioned at tables in La Brasserie De La Cour restaurant; with the owner, Thierry Le Port, saying they would stop people from sitting too close to others while also avoiding big, empty spaces.

He added they also helped to create a "good atmosphere" with some diners not even realising they were mannequins at first.

Customers of the French restaurant have described the mannequins as "slightly creepy" but effective.

You can read more here.

Presidential candidate Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama - Biden's boss when he was vice-president for eight years - have sat down for their first in-person meeting of the 2020 election year.

A one-minute clip teasing their interview, which will be released tomorrow, show them arriving at Obama's office in Washington DC wearing face masks and criticising Trump's handling of the pandemic.

"Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying, ‘It's not my responsibility'," Biden says, quoting Trump in March when he was asked about testing delays.

"Those words didn't come out of our mouths when we were in office," Obama responds.

Image source, Getty Images

Spanish Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto has said a resurgence of coronavirus cases in Catalonia was coming under control, and that she hoped there would be no need for neighbouring France to close its border.

“With the latest data we have in Aragon and Catalonia we are a bit more optimistic. Catalonia has already reduced the number of infections over the last three days,” said Ms Maroto.

“Let’s hope that with these better data we don’t have to close a border that for us is very important for mobility with our European partners.”

The northeastern Spanish region has logged more than 7,000 new cases of Covid-19 over the last weeks - nearly half of the national total - although its infection rate has dropped in the recent days.

Catalan leader Quim Torra has ruled out a return to lockdown, telling the regional parliament that "Catalonia can't be closed."

But elsewhere, in Madrid the regional government said it might make face masks compulsory - even in situations where social distancing can be guaranteed - unless the national government imposed safety controls on people flying in to the capita's Barajas airport. Madrid and the Canary Islands are the only regions of Spain without such strict face mask rules in place.

The global number of confirmed coronavirus infections has risen to over 15 million, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, external.

More than 617,000 deaths have also been reported by the US university.