Image source, Reuters

More now on one of our main stories, an inquiry in Australia into the handling of a cruise ship in which hundreds of passengers were allowed to disembark despite suspected cases of Covid-19.

Protocol required the Department of Agriculture to complete checklists of passengers who were ill - but at the inquiry, the department secretary, Andrew Metcalfe, admitted that had not happened.

"In hindsight, the national protocol was not followed and the officers believed that they were exercising their responsibilities appropriately through the communication that did occur with the NSW [New South Wales] Health Department," he said, ABC reports., external

About 2,650 passengers were allowed to leave when the ship docked in Sydney in March. The ship was ultimately linked to at least 900 infections and 28 deaths.

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We can now confirm that the opening match of the season for France's top football league, Ligue 1, has been postponed from Friday to either 16 or 17 September.

Three new coronavirus cases were confirmed at Olympique de Marseille (OM), bringing the club's total to four, meaning its game against Saint Etienne could not go ahead.

Hugh Pym
BBC News Health Editor

A new Health Protection Institute for England is set to be launched this morning.

It will, we are told, be modelled on Germany's Robert Koch Institute which combats infectious diseases.

Expertise from Public Health England and the Test and Trace network will be pooled to form an organisation focussed on tackling the coronavirus threat and future pandemics. And therein lies the historic problem.

PHE was formed as part of government health reforms in 2012 with an ungainly merger of health protection and prevention initiatives such as obesity strategies. It was pulled in different directions and had to get by with successive annual budget cuts.

PHE has been blamed for the suspension of community testing and tracing in March but senior sources say it was not set up to run a mass diagnostic testing system and any decisions made then were in partnership with government advisers.

The centrepiece of the reforms is the creation of the new agency but there are still big questions over what will happen to PHE's vital work on prevention of ill health and tackling health inequalities.

Image source, Getty Images

While A-level students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been reassured the grades predicted by their teachers can be used, uncertainty still remains for pupils who took specialist work-related qualifications, including BTecs.

Currently, only A-level and GCSE students have been affected by changes announced on Monday and it is up to individual vocational exam bodies to decide how to mark students.

But Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said his department was working with awarding bodies to extend the changes to vocational qualifications and make sure there was no further delay for students receiving these results.

For BTec National students, grades are currently based on completed assessments and predicted results for those assessments that didn't happen. These will then be adapted, based on whether the predicted grades are higher than usual for a particular college.

This is similar to how A-level students were marked. However, BTec students do far more graded assessments throughout the year, meaning predicted grades were more similar to previous years, according to Pearson, the company which runs BTecs.

You can read more about what is happening with technical qualifications here.

Can UK universities cope with the massive increase in students achieving top grades if teacher-predicted results are accepted? Is there not the possibility of teacher bias towards certain pupils when teacher estimates are used? Will they change the results for vocational students as well?

Just some of the questions answered here by experts Eddie Playfair and Catherine Sezen, senior policy managers at the Association of Colleges, external.

Brazil has been one of the countries hit worst by the coronavirus pandemic, with nearly 3.5 million cases and more than 100,000 deaths. President Jair Bolsonaro has played down the risks of the illness, calling it a "little flu".

In a BBC interview, his Vice-President, Hamilton Mourão, defended Brazil's response, saying although the government regretted the loss of life he thought they were doing a "good job".

He went on to say that a lack of discipline among Brazilians made social distancing difficult.

Image source, AFP

Football fixtures remain fragile and Spain has a worrying rise in cases.

• Three coronavirus cases have been confirmed at Olympique de Marseille (OM), one of France’s top clubs. This jeopardises the start of the new Ligue 1 football season on Friday, when OM are due to play Saint Etienne. In total OM now has four cases – and four is the threshold for postponing a match
• Spain's surge in cases is taking a big toll on its vital tourism sector. On Monday Spain reported 1,833 new Covid infections in the past 24 hours – more than three times last month’s average. Spain’s post-lockdown record for daily infections was on Friday, with 2,987 confirmed new cases.
• Greece expects to receive a first batch of Covid-19 vaccines in December, under an EU deal envisaging three million doses in total for Greece. But the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca still has to pass phase four of clinical trials in November
• Finland’s Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, says she has mild respiratory symptoms and is self-isolating again – for the fourth time. She will continue teleworking and will have a new coronavirus test

Image source, EPA

Thousands of demonstrators defied the lockdown in force in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, to join anti-government protests on Monday. Marches were also held in other major Argentine cities.

The protesters' grievances were many with some voicing their opposition to the way the government has handled the pandemic while others turned out to oppose a planned judicial reform which would see the number of federal courts increased.

A nationwide lockdown in Argentina began on 20 March. It has since been eased in more rural regions but President Alberto Fernández has extended it until 30 August for Buenos Aires and the surrounding area.

“The only medicine we have found so far is to limit the movement of people and the face-to-face meeting of people as much as possible,” Fernández said.

Argentina has just under 300,000 confirmed cases, with the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires accounting for 90% of those.

Image source, Reuters

Schools in one English town are being urged to join a scheme that would only permit pedestrians and cyclists to use nearby roads at drop-off and pick-up times.

The School Streets initiative will allow more space for social distancing, Reading Borough Council, in the south-east, said.

Council transport boss Tony Page said the return of schools in September presented a "considerable challenge" amid ongoing coronavirus restrictions and the scheme would make school journeys safer.

It will be funded through a £150,000 grant from the Department for Transport, which has allocated money to encourage walking and cycling during the pandemic.

Read more here.

Labour's shadow health secretary has described a planned reorganisation of Public Health England as "irresponsible" and "desperate blame-shifting".

A new Health Protection Institute is set to launch later today, which will merge some of PHE's pandemic response work with England's NHS Test and Trace system - although PHE will continue other responsibilities, such as combating obesity, for now.

In a tweet, external, Jonathan Ashworth said: "A structural reorganisation mid-pandemic is time consuming, energy sapping. It's risky indeed irresponsible.

"And what an insulting way to treat hardworking staff who heard about this from a pay walled Sunday newspaper leaving them with questions and worries about their jobs."

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

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock is set to launch a new Health Protection Institute later today, which will merge some of Public Health England's pandemic response work with England's NHS Test and Trace system.

PHE has come under intense scrutiny over its response to the crisis and has been criticised for its decision in March to halt community testing and tracing of contacts.

However, Prof Sian Griffiths, associate board member for Public Health England and chair of its global health committee, defended the work of the body, although she acknowledged it had not got everything right.

Speaking in a personal capacity she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I would say that we need to take a cool look, share the lessons learnt and work out how to do this."

She added that the wider responsibilities of PHE, including environmental health, the country's obesity strategy and immunisation, should not be neglected, pointing out that public health had seen "constant reorganisation" in recent years.

Read more on this story here.

Image source, Two Castles Community Festival

One community in Northern Ireland have built hay bale superheroes to remind themselves that "together we are a super power" in the fight against coronavirus, BBC News NI's Ali Gordon reports.

The 12ft (3.65m) high structures have been erected in a field near Newtownstewart, County Tyrone.

Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man, Captain America, Wonder Woman and Superwoman are attracting lots of visitors.

"We thought we'd use the bales as a message for Covid-19 - that superheroes represent us, the people, who are key weapons in the battle against coronavirus," said Shauneen Kilpatrick.

Read more about the superheroes here

Following days of anger from students and teachers, the government has changed the way A-level grades are calculated so pupils can use the grades predicted by their teachers rather than an algorithm designed to moderate them.

However, the U-turn came too late for some students, with some university courses already full.

A-level student Natasha Hounslow was predicted A*A*A by her teachers but was awarded A*BB by the standardisation system - meaning she missed both her university offers to study medicine.

Both universities have said she may have to defer her place to 2021 because they don't have the space to take her this year and there were no other medicine places available through clearing.

“I’m quite anxious to be honest because I don't want to take a year out because I think ideally I’d try and find a job but there’s not many opportunities this year, especially with coronavirus," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

You can read more reaction from students here.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has repeatedly refused to say if he intends to resign after a U-turn in how exams are graded.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said his focus was on "making sure that every student gets the grades that they deserve".

Welsh students have spoken of their "massive relief" after they were given the A-level results they were fighting for.

The Welsh Government announced a U-turn on Monday and said those and GCSE results estimated by teachers would now be used, rather than those produced by an algorithm.

There had been outrage after 42% of A-level grades in Wales were downgraded because of the system.

For some students, the change means future plans are no longer in tatters.

Universities said they were "working hard to place applicants on the course of their choice".

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Universities cannot guarantee students places if their A-level grades are now higher following a government U-turn over how they were calculated, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sunderland has said.

Sir David Bell said his university would offer places where they were still available but “that is not the same as a guaranteed place for everyone, on every course, everywhere”.

“We have to just level with students and say whilst we will all do all in our power to get you a place, we cannot guarantee," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

“It appears as if one quick fix after another has been thrown in without anyone actually thinking through the consequences," he said, adding that universities were limited by capacity and had to follow strict instructions on maintaining health and safety given the pandemic.

Read more on this story here.

Image source, Getty Images

People in their 20s, 30s and 40s unaware they are infected are driving the spread of coronavirus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

The proportion of young people with Covid-19 has risen, officials said, putting the lives of those who are more vulnerable at risk if people socialise without realising they are carrying the virus.

"The epidemic is changing,", external the WHO Western Pacific regional director, Takeshi Kasai, also explained.

"What we are observing is not simply a resurgence. We believe it's a signal that we have entered a new phase of pandemic in the Asia-Pacific," he said.

Outbreaks have occured in recent weeks in countries like Vietnam where the virus had appeared to be under control.

Several European countries including France and Spain have seen case numbers rise significantly in the past two weeks, with some warning that young people are not following social distancing guidelines.

Soutik Biswas
India Correspondent

Image source, AFP

India has registered more than 50,000 Covid-19 deaths, overtaking the UK to become the fourth-worst-affected country for fatalities.

But the number of deaths per million people stands at 34 - far lower than what has been reported in Europe or North America.

The case fatality rate or CFR, which measures deaths among Covid-19 patients, is just around 2%. Even in badly hit state like Maharashtra the number of deaths is doubling only in about 40 days. "The death rates have kept low all along, even as cases rose," K Srinath Reddy, president of the think tank, Public Health Foundation of India, told me.

Many epidemiologists attribute this relatively low fatality rate to a young population - the elderly are typically more vulnerable to the infection. It is not clear whether other factors like immunity deriving from previous infections from other coronaviruses, are also responsible. Also, they point to a pattern of low mortality in South Asian countries that share a similar demographic of a younger population: reported Covid-19 deaths per million are 22 in Bangladesh and 28 in Pakistan.

Clearly, corrected for population size, India is doing far better than Europe and America. Yet, as Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist of the World Bank, says: "It is irresponsible to treat this as consolation".

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Day One of the Democratic Party convention is over - and we now know a little more about what a virtual political event looks and feels like in the year of coronavirus.

Without the passionate crowd to react to speeches, it was left to the event organisers to manufacture some energy and emotion among the audience watching at home.

Cue A-list celebrities, heart-wrenching personal stories and political speeches cut much shorter than in conventions past.

While universities will be limited by capacity, they will “bend over backwards” to accept students if they can, after the government changed how A-level grades were awarded, the head of the UK’s university admissions service said.

In the U-turn announced on Monday, ministers in England, Northern Ireland and Wales said grades could now be based on teachers’ assessments rather than an algorithm, following widespread criticism.

Clare Marchant, chief executive of Ucas, said 69% of students had already got a place at their first choice university.

However, for others, she said universities would have to consider coronavirus safety measures and whether there was capacity on courses, when deciding whether to accept students whose grades now met the requirements after the government U-turn.

You can read more on the implications of the U-turn for universities here.