The Lib Dems have criticised a decision to create a new body responsible for England's coronavirus response in the middle of the pandemic.

The opposition party's health spokewoman, Munira Wilson, said ministers were trying to "deflect responsibility" for some of the decisions made on issues such as Personal Protective Equipment and the Test and Trace strategy.

She accused the government of attempting to "scapegoat" Public Health England (PHE), which will hand over some of its responsibilities to the new National Institute for Health Protection.

Wilson told the BBC there might be a case for streamlining the agency but doing so in the middle of a pandemic was "highly irresponsible".

She also questioned what would happen to PHE's other responsibilities including for immunisation and tackling obesity.

Read more on this story here.

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Nail bars, outdoor pools and beauty salons can reopen in the English city of Leicester from Wednesday in a relaxation of the city's local lockdown following a fall in coronavirus cases, the health secretary has confirmed.

Tanning booths, spas, massage and tattoo parlours and body and skin-piercing services will be able to reopen, while guidance for music venues and theatres to stay closed will be dropped.

However, current restrictions on gatherings in private homes and gardens will remain in place, Matt Hancock said, to "further bring down the rate of infection".

Leicester was the first in the UK to go into local lockdown on 29 June and was left to watch as restrictions eased in much of the rest of England.

Since June, some restrictions on the Midlands city have eased, with businesses like pubs and restaurants reopening at the beginning of this month.

• How many confirmed cases are there in your area?

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Chancellor Angela Merkel has said there should be no further easing of coronavirus restrictions in Germany after cases in the country doubled over the past three weeks.

She put the increase down to rising mobility and closer contact among people during the course of the summer.

"We are in the midst of the pandemic. The virus is here even though it's not visible. There is no vaccine yet and no medication either. That's why we are seeing that rising mobility and more contacts among people lead to increasing numbers of cases. In Germany, cases have doubled in the past three weeks. That's a development which should not continue like that and which we must stop."

There have been 226,804 cases and 9,240 deaths in the country, according to figures collated by Johns Hopkins University.

Lucy Williamson
BBC Paris Correspondent

Image source, Reuters

As we reported earlier, France is planning to make face masks compulsory in shared officespaces from 1 September.

Work Minister Elisabeth Borne told AFP news agency the “systematic” wearing of masks would be necessary in all enclosed workspaces that were shared by staff, including corridors, open-plan offices and meeting rooms.

A statement from the Ministry of Work and Employment said the measures used to manage the end of lockdown needed to be replaced by more durable plans to protect workers.

It follows weeks of rising coronavirus cases in France, and updated advice on the risk of aerosol infections.

Health authority figures suggest that almost a quarter of new clusters here have been linked to workplaces outside the medical professions.

France is managing this spike in new infections while also encouraging the country back to work, in order to claw back an 11% hole in its budget this year left by coronavirus.

Until now, the government has advised the wearing of masks at work only when social distancing is impossible. It is still advising people to work from home where they can.

A further five people who have tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospitals in England.

The patients were aged between 64 and 86, and all had known underlying health conditions, NHS England said.

One more person has died after testing positive in Northern Ireland and the number of confirmed cases rose by 41.

No further deaths have been reported in Wales and the total number of cases increased by 24, according to Public Health Wales.

As we reported earlier, Scotland recorded no new deaths and confirmed a further 49 cases.

We'll bring you the UK-wide figures, which are calculated slightly differently, later on.

BBC OS

Image source, Kelley Fisher

As schools in the US begin to reopen, teachers and parents are still divided on whether it is safe enough to go back.

In the state of Arizona, a public school district has been forced to cancel plans to restart in-person classes, after more than 100 teachers called in sick to protest against unsafe working conditions during the pandemic.

Kelley Fisher, who teaches kindergarten, has been leading the protests. "I probably will resign," she told BBC OS on World Service radio.

"I love the classroom, I love being face to face with my students, and you are probably not going to find a teacher that would say they love teaching online.

"But if I were told to go back to school, where our numbers are, I would probably have to make the very tough decision to at least sit out the rest of this school year."

There have been more than 190,000 Covid-19 cases in the state, and about 4,500 deaths.

Image source, Getty Images

A university in North Carolina has moved its undergraduate classes online after a rise in cases during the first week of teaching.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said 177 students were in isolation and 349 were in quarantine. , external

It said most students who had tested positive had mild symptoms.

According to CNN, there are clusters at residence halls, a student apartment complex and one cluster among members of a fraternity, external.

The residence halls are currently under 60% capacity.

Orange County, where the university is located, is also reporting a rise in cases., external

Twice as many adults across England, Scotland and Wales are now experiencing some level of depression compared with before the pandemic, figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest.

The data shows that nearly one in 10 (9.7%) British adults suffered some sort of depression between July 2019 and March 2020.

But when the same group of 3,500 participants were assessed again in June, the figure had risen to 19.2% - nearly one in five.

Adults under 40, women, people with a disability and those with strained finances were most likely to show symptoms of depression, the survey found.

Read more here.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says 220 cases have now been linked to the outbreak in pubs in Aberdeen - with 1,125 contacts identified.

A local lockdown was imposed in Aberdeen earlier this month after a rise in cases - and the restrictions are due to be reviewed on Wednesday.

Sturgeon said new cases across the Grampian area were now declining, suggesting the restrictions “are having an impact”, but warned it was too early to say if measures would be lifted.

Nine new cases have now been tied to a food processing plant in Coupar Angus, she said. The factory has been closed and all 900 workers there will be tested today.

Sturgeon also said the clusters identified in Lanarkshire and north-east Glasgow were "community clusters with impact on schools" - it’s not thought the virus was transmitted within schools.

The first minister said no further deaths were recorded in Scotland in the last 24 hours. A further 49 cases had been confirmed, she said.

Kerry Allen
BBC Monitoring, Chinese Media Analyst

A Chinese pharmaceutical company has announced that it is expecting to have a vaccine by the end of the year.

The chairman of Sinopharm, Liu Jingzhen, has told media that one of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine candidates, currently undergoing Phase III clinical trials on humans in the United Arab Emirates, is expected to be on the market by the end of December.

Mr Liu himself has been injected with two doses of the vaccine, and told Global Times he has so far felt “no side effects”, external.

China has workshops in the cities of Beijing and Wuhan that are able to produce 120 million and 100 million doses a year respectively, and the vaccine is expected to be priced under 1,000 yuan ($144; £110) for two doses.

There are some concerns in the mainland at the price, with many on the Sina Weibo social media platform saying that it would be unaffordable to rural Chinese. However, given China is currently reporting no domestic cases, only imports, there is limited concern an outbreak would reach smaller, rural communities.

There are more than 200 vaccine candidates currently in development around the world, and more than 20 are at the stage of being used in human clinical trials.

Oxford University has said it is working to ensure everyone who has met their offer under the government's new grading system can be admitted either this year or next, on top of students who have already been awarded places.

However, with many more offer-holders now meeting their grades than in a normal year, the university said it faced "significant capacity constraints".

In a statement, external, the university said it was reviewing the capacity on its courses and within colleges and would confirm the position of offer-holders as soon as possible.

It added: "We will need to ensure we minimise the risk to the health of our staff and students caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst also protecting the quality and the personalised nature of our teaching."

Coronavirus cases at a dessert factory testing its entire workforce have risen to more than 70.

Some 1,600 employees at Bakkavor factory in Nottinghamshire, in the East Midlands region of England, are undergoing testing.

So far 701 have been checked, with 72 confirmed cases, Nottinghamshire County Council said, while 33 people have been able to return to work.

The company, which makes desserts for supermarket chains Waitrose and Tesco, said it had communicated to staff the dangers of car sharing and the need for social distancing.

Read more here.

France is to make wearing masks in all "shared and enclosed" workplaces compulsory.

The Work Minister, Elisabeth Borne, confirmed the move after meeting unions for discussions, AFP news agency reports.

The measures are due to come in from 1 September, with individual offices exempt, according to French media.

Image source, EPA

South Korea, which has won praise for its handling of Covid-19, is tightening social distancing measures after a spike in cases.

Rules have already been tightened in the capital Seoul but they've been extended to the nearby port of Incheon. High-risk business venues such as karaoke bars and buffets are being ordered shut, and indoor gatherings of more than 50 people banned.

Authorities reported 246 new infections on Tuesday, the fifth straight day of triple-digit increases. Many of the cases have been linked to church gatherings.

Image source, Reuters

Australians are made of "tough stuff", the Prince of Wales has said, in a message of support for people facing a resurgence of coronavirus in Victoria.

Prince Charles, who contracted coronavirus himself in March, said the increase in cases would have "heartbreaking consequences" for so many, but that the state would emerge stronger than ever.

"I just wanted to say, on behalf of my wife and myself, that you are so much in our special thoughts at what I can well imagine is a tremendously testing and frustrating time, and that we care deeply for what you are having to go through," he said.

Melbourne, Victoria's capital, has been in lockdown for more than a month, with strict measures now in place, including a night-time curfew.

The state still has 7,274 active cases and remains Australia's worst concern.

Read more here

Image source, Reuters

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has hit back at US President Donald Trump, calling him "patently wrong" for comments he made about new cases in New Zealand.

Trump described a cluster as a "big surge" the US would do well to avoid. The numbers remain small - on Monday nine new cases were confirmed in New Zealand in the fresh outbreak. The cluster has though prompted a lockdown in the city of Auckland and the postponement of elections.

"Anyone who is following will quite easily see that New Zealand's nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States' tens of thousands," Ardern said.

"Obviously, it's patently wrong."

Image source, ANDREW PARSONS/10 DOWNING STREET/CROWN COPYRIGHT

Matt Hancock confirmed the new National Institute for Health Protection would be temporarily led by Baroness Dido Harding, who runs NHS Test and Trace in England, and would report directly to ministers.

The health secretary said he would consult on how Public Health England's responsibilities for health improvement would be embedded in the system and would be saying more on this over the coming weeks.

Lady Harding will run the new institute until a permanent appointment is made.

Image source, Policy Exchange

In a speech at London's Policy Exchange, a UK think tank, Matt Hancock said the country's public health officials had delivered "incredible work" during the pandemic, but the changes he was announcing were designed to strengthen its response.

The health secretary said the existing system in England did not "go into this crisis with the capacity for a response to a once in a century scale event".

For example, he said that while the country had some of the best labs available, it was unable to call upon the private diagnostics industry to increase capacity.

The Department of Health and Social Care said the new National Institute for Health Protection for England will operate from spring 2021.

The pandemic is being exacerbated by countries putting their own interests ahead of others' in trying to secure supplies of apossible Covid-19 vaccine, the head of the World Health Organization says.

"[Acting] strategically and globally is actually in eachcountry's national interest - no one is safe until everyone issafe," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.

"We need to prevent Covid-19 vaccine nationalism," he said.

He added that he had sent a letter to all WHO members asking them to join multilateral vaccine efforts.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced a new National Institute for Health Protection for England, to protect the public from external threats to health including biological weapons, pandemics and other infectious diseases.

The body will merge some of the work of Public Health England with the NHS Test and Trace programme.

Hancock said it would also work closely with devolved administrations and local officials to create a "stronger, more joined up response".