Summary

  • US President Donald Trump is discharged from the Walter Reed medical centre following three days of Covid treatment

  • His doctors say he is safe to return to the White House but "may not be entirely out of the woods yet"

  • In a tweet, he said we was feeling "really good", and added: "Don't be afraid of Covid"

  • Questions remain about the seriousness of the president's illness after conflicting statements

  • In the UK, a technical glitch which meant nearly 16,000 cases went unreported has caused delays to its track and trace system

  • UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said he will "always balance the books" as coronavirus costs rise

  • All bars in the French capital Paris will shut from Tuesday as the city's coronavirus alert is raised to maximum

  • More than 35.1 million cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed globally, with over one million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University

  1. 'World's best airport' warns of prolonged crisispublished at 11:40 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    A photo from inside Singapore's Changi AirportImage source, Getty Images

    Singapore's Changi Airport has warned of a "daunting period" ahead as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic shows no signs of abating.

    The Asian transit hub has been voted world's best airport for the eighth consecutive year. But Changi has had to suspend operations in two terminals as flights have dropped to historic lows.

    It has also halted the construction of a fifth terminal for at least two years.

    "The battle with Covid-19 has only just begun," Changi Airport Group said in its annual report. "The future does appear daunting with the situation showing no signs of abatement."

    Find out more here.

  2. Johnson says extra 16,000 cases gives 'realistic' picture of UK epidemicpublished at 11:26 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Boris Johnson and Rishi SunakImage source, Getty Images
    Image caption,

    The prime minister, pictured with Chancellor Rishi Sunak, said people must self-isolate if told to

    Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the addition of the missing 16,000 confirmed cases from last week gives a more “realistic” picture of the UK epidemic.

    He said the corrected data “corresponds to pretty much where we thought we were”.

    “To be frank, I think that the slightly lower numbers that we’d seen, you know, didn’t really reflect where we thought the disease was likely to go, so I think these numbers are realistic,” he said.

    He added that the “crucial thing” was to see in the next few days and weeks whether the additional restrictions and enforcement have an impact.

    With the extra cases added to last week's figures, Manchester now has England's highest rate of infection, with 495.6 cases per 100,000 people, up from 223.2 in the previous week.

    The second highest is in Liverpool, up to 456.4 per 100,000 from 287.1. Nearby Knowsley is close behind in third place.

    Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham, Leeds and Sheffield also saw sharp increases once missing cases were added to their total.

  3. Sri Lanka shuts schools after 'mystery' Covid casepublished at 11:18 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Security personnel stand guard at a checkpoint in Divulapitiya on the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo on October 4, 2020, as police imposed a curfew on the towns of Minuwangoda and Divulapitiya following the discovery of a coronavirus patient, the first case reported from the community after several weeks.Image source, Getty Images
    Image caption,

    Curfew has been imposed in the town of Divulapitiya

    Sri Lanka has announced an early end to school terms after a factory worker in the town of Divulapitiya - on the outskirts of the capital Colombo - tested positive for Covid-19. Curfew has been imposed in the town.

    The unidentified woman's daughter has since tested positive, along with at least 69 other workers at the factory.

    It is unclear how the woman contracted the virus. Sri Lanka's cases of Covid-19 have been contained to specific clusters so far. The health ministry says there have been 3,471 cases and 13 deaths recorded there since March. Since then, the country has shut down the airport for commercial flights and has only been allowing in repatriated citizens - who have to spend a month in quarantine. This is the first reported case in weeks.

    Officials are now conducting more tests, and have placed more than 1,000 people in quarantine. They are also attempting to trace where and how the woman may have contracted the virus.

    The news sent has shockwaves through a country where life had resumed pre-pandemic normalcy. Officials have asked people to suspend all non-essential travel. Panic buying has been reported in some areas.

  4. Virus torpedoes Juventus v Napolipublished at 11:10 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Juventus staff, 4 Oct 20Image source, EPA
    Image caption,

    Juventus were all set to kick a ball around

    A top-flight Italian football match - Juventus v Napoli - descended into chaos on Sunday when Napoli failed to turn up in Turin because of coronavirus.

    After two team members tested positive this week, Napoli say they were ordered not to travel by their local health authority in Naples, the ASL. However, Italy's Serie A football league refused to call the game off. Napoli now face an automatic 3-0 defeat.

    The league says the ASL overruled a protocol agreed between the country's health and sports ministry and the football authorities. The protocol states that, if players test positive, the rest of the squad can still train and play again providing they are tested again and return negative results.

  5. 'We need to make it through four months without movies' - cinema bosspublished at 10:59 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    People watching Tenet at the Odeon Leicester SquareImage source, Reuters
    Image caption,

    Christopher Nolan's Tenet in August was the last major movie to be released

    Following the announcement from Cineworld that it will shut all its sites in the UK and US, the chief executive of rival chain Vue said the industry needs "just need to make it through the next three or four months where there are no movies".

    Tim Richards told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that retaining the jobs of all his 5,500 employees was "still our goal", but he was concerned that independents and small regional operators "are going to really struggle".

    There is "pent-up demand like we've never seen" from the cinema-going public, but the decision of studios to delay the release of blockbusters such as new Bond movie No Time To Die was a "big blow", he said.

  6. Trump in hospital: 'We're here to tell him that we love him'published at 10:51 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Lebo Diseko
    BBC News, Washington DC

    Supporters holding flags wait outside the Walter Reed military hospitalImage source, Getty Images

    "We love Trump!"

    "Four more years!"

    "Donald Trump FOREVER!" shouted the crowd gathered outside Walter Reed military hospital where the US president is being treated.

    And on Sunday evening they were rewarded, as the president drove past.

    But who are the people gathering outside the hospital, and why do they think it's important to be there? Read the full story here.

  7. Hotspots in north-west England hit by missing cases issuepublished at 10:42 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Some of the 16,000 confirmed UK cases which went unreported for days are thought to have been in parts of north-west England most badly affected by the virus, BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley says.

    It means that last week's reported figures in areas under heightened coronavirus measures and additional scrutiny have not been accurate.

    "When we look at where the disease is worst, we might not be getting the full picture," he adds.

    But Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey has now said "the majority of people" who needed to be traced have been found - although the delay may mean there is a risk of further transmission in the intervening days.

  8. Paris and other cities tighten controlspublished at 10:31 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    A Paris bar, Sept 2020Image source, EPA
    Image caption,

    Paris bars face another big blow to business

    European countries are racing to control increasing infection rates, with tighter measures being imposed in several cities.

    • From Tuesday bars in Paris will have to shut for two weeks and the capital's restaurants and cafes must tighten their hygiene measures. Similar rules are already in force in Marseille. Paris universities can only have lecture halls half-full. The French government is alarmed that in Paris the infection rate is now above 250 per 100,000 people, and Covid patients account for more than 30% of intensive care beds.
    • In Moscow schoolchildren will have to stay at home for two weeks and firms have been told to keep at least 30% of staff working from home. Russia's daily infection rate has risen to 10,888 - the highest since May.
    • The Czech Republic has reimposed a state of emergency, as its two-week average infection rate is 303 per 100,000, with only Spain's (319) higher in Europe, according to EU experts. Czech borders remain open, but indoor gatherings are limited to 10 people maximum.
    • Ireland's emergency health team, the NPHET, has recommended measures almost as tight as a full lockdown. Level Five would see all indoor gatherings banned and bars and restaurants only able to do takeaways.
  9. UK's 16,000 missing cases 'caused by file size issue'published at 10:19 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    For the last two days, the UK has seen extraordinarily high daily recorded figures for confirmed coronavirus cases as Public Health England scrambled to catch up with 15,841 infections which should have been reported last week.

    But how did the delay occur?

    The technical issue to blame was a problem with the maximum file size permitted on the system, according to the PA Media news agency.

    Some files containing positive test results were too large for the system that takes in the results and loads them into central systems, officials told the agency.

    They said that rapid measures have been taken to ensure the issue does not happen again.

  10. Deaths down in Peru and 103-year-old survivorpublished at 10:07 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Medical personnel carry out COVID-19 tests in Lima, Peru, 08 September 2020Image source, EPA

    Some positive news out of Peru, which has one of the highest number of Covid-related deaths per capita in the world. For the past week, the number of fatalities recorded daily has been below 100, down from a record high of more than 300 in June.

    The number of daily new infections has also been below 3,500 for the past seven days. International flights to and from Peru - which had been suspended since March - will resume from Monday.

    And there was a heart-warming story out of Mexico this weekend, where a 103-year-old woman who'd contracted Covid-19 was discharged from hospital.

    Doctors said Doña María had been in good spirits throughout her 11 days in hospital, chatting to staff and telling them to take care with their health. In a video released by Mexico's Social Security Institute she can be seen applauding her carers and heard telling doctors she will pray for their safety.

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    Doña María is not the oldest Mexican to survive the virus: an 118-year-old man from the state of Tabasco holds that record.

  11. Demand for new cars hits 21-year low as UK economy strugglespublished at 09:57 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    A Vauxhall dealership in north LondonImage source, Getty Images
    Image caption,

    Petrol and diesel car sales have slumped, with manufacturers blaming the pandemic

    New car sales in the UK fell to their lowest point in 21 years as manufacturers said the pandemic was continuing to damage consumer and business confidence.

    Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders industry body, said it has been "a torrid year" and although the industry had shown resilience, "this is not a recovery".

    “Unless the pandemic is controlled and economy-wide consumer and business confidence rebuilt, the short-term future looks very challenging indeed,” he said.

    The 4.4% year-on-year drop in sales meant it was the weakest September for new car registrations since 1999. Overall sales in the first nine months of the year were down by a third from 2019.

    But sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars continued their rise, increasing from this time last year by 184.3% and 138.6% respectively.

  12. South Korean minister sorry for husband’s ‘yacht-buying’ trippublished at 09:45 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    South Korea’s foreign minister has apologised after her husband travelled to the US to reportedly buy a yacht - violating her own official pandemic travel advice.

    Lee Yill-byung, a professor emeritus at Yonsei University, was spotted at Incheon International Airport on Saturday, departing for the US.

    He told reporters, external he was going on holiday.

    “The coronavirus will not disappear within a day or two. You cannot just stay at home every day, so in my opinion, you can maintain a normal life to an extent while remaining vigilant,” Mr Lee said.

    According to media reports, he was travelling to the US to buy a yacht which he could sail to the Caribbean - plans he had earlier detailed on his personal blog.

    However, since March, Kang Kyung-wha’s foreign ministry has advised citizens to refrain from non-essential overseas travel during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    "I am sorry that this happened when the people are refraining from outside activities including overseas travels,” Ms Kang was quoted as saying, external by a ministry official on Sunday.

    According to the daily Chosun Ilbo, external, when questioned if she would ask her husband to return, Ms Kang said: "He planned the trip for such a long time, and postponed it several times, so it's difficult for me to tell him (to come home)."

  13. Trumps view illness as 'unacceptable', says niecepublished at 09:33 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Mary Trump on a video call in August 2020Image source, Reuters
    Image caption,

    Mary Trump has written a tell-all book about her family

    The Trump family view illness as a “display of unforgiveable weakness”, according to Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s estranged niece.

    Speaking to NPR this weekend, she said both the president and his father viewed illness as “unacceptable”, external which “sounds incredibly cruel, but happens to be true”.

    “That’s why [the US] is in the horrible place we’re in,” she said. “Because he cannot admit to the weakness of being ill or of other people being ill.”

    Ms Trump, who holds a doctorate in psychology, recently published a tell-all book about her family entitled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

    President Trump on Sunday said in a video statement that he had learned a lot about Covid-19 in recent days. "I learned it by really going to school," he said.

  14. Two weeks of stricter measures could 'buy time' for Scotlandpublished at 09:21 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Scotland's national clinical director Jason Leitch has said a two-week period of stricter cornonavirus measures - dubbed a "circuit-breaker" - could buy the nation time and set the epidemic back by 28 days.

    Leitch told BBC Scoland's Seven Days programme that the restrictions would not be a "full lockdown like 23 March" and could allow schools and colleges to stay open.

    But he said it could be a "short, sharp shock to the R number" - the measure which scientists use to tell how quickly the epidemic is growing.

    "You get the R number down, you get the numbers down to a reasonable level and then you can begin to reintroduce some of the things that you've closed," he said.

    He said the estimate was "not an exact science", but a two-week period of restrictions could "buy you about a month in the pandemic".

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  15. Trump: I'm at the 'real school' of Covid-19published at 09:11 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Media caption,

    Trump coronavirus treatment taught him 'a lot'

    President Trump has told supporters that he had "learned a lot about Covid" in the past few days.

    "I learnt it by really going to school. This is the real school, this isn’t the let’s-read-the-book school," he said in a message released just before his controversial drive-by outside the Walter Reed Medical Center, where he is being treated

    "And I get it, and I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know all about it.

    "In the meantime we love the US and we love what’s happening."

  16. Analysis: Contact tracing is the real victim of UK virus data chaospublished at 09:05 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    James Gallagher
    Health and science correspondent, BBC News

    There have been clear problems with the government’s Test and Trace data, but they do not change our view of the UK’s trajectory.

    Cases surged at the beginning of September, they may still be climbing, but not as quickly as anticipated just a few weeks ago.

    This perspective comes from three key sets of data - the Office for National Statistics, the React study by Imperial College London and the Covid symptom tracker app.

    None are blighted by either the current issues with the Test and Trace data or by people struggling to access a test.

    The real fallout of the weekend’s statistical chaos is not in the numbers, but in the people who should have been contact traced, told to quarantine and instead may have been unwittingly passing on the virus.

  17. EU Commission head self-isolatingpublished at 08:51 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is self-isolating after learning that she was in contact with someone who tested positive for coronavirus.

    Von der Leyen said she met the individual in question last Tuesday and would remain in quarantine until tomorrow.

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  18. How the US has been affected by coronavirus?published at 08:43 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, are the most high-profile figures to have tested positive for coronavirus in the US in recent days.

    But they're far from alone: the country has recorded more than seven million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began, the highest number in the world.

    The US also has the world's highest official death toll, with more than 200,000 fatalities.

    Number of daily cases and deaths in the US

    The number of deaths has declined, however, with the seven-day average remaining below 1,000 since the end of August.

    You can find out more about the spread of coronavirus across the globe in our guide.

    A map showing cases in US states, with infections rising in Wisconsin and North and South Dakota
  19. Three-week delay not enough to avoid exam chaos, say UK teacherspublished at 08:27 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    A-level student protestImage source, EPA
    Image caption,

    A-level students took to the streets to protest an attempt to give them grades by algorithm this year

    UK teacher and headteacher unions are meeting Schools Minister Nick Gibb today to pressure him to fundamentally overhaul next year's exams system and prevent a repeat of this year's assessment crisis.

    After exams were cancelled this year, an attempt to grade students algorithmically failed, with widespread complaints of unfairness and irrational results.

    Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL head teacher union, said current proposals for the 2021 exams were insufficient. "The idea that pushing exams back by three weeks to compensate simply isn’t enough," he said.

    He said the next generation of students taking exams in 2021 had missed up to three months of teaching, likely including crucial parts of the curriculum.

    "It would be unthinkable that those students would be tested in the same way as previous generations of students," Mr Barton said.

    He said the unions wanted a range of "safety net" measures to allow students to be fairly assessed no matter what happens in the next year.

    That includes assessments in November or December, set by exams boards and assessed by teachers, to ensure there was something to base results on if a student could not take exams next year.

    They are also calling for more optional content in exams, so students can work around parts of the curriculum they missed. And they want to see back-up papers, so if students miss one exam they can sit it shortly afterwards.

  20. Unanswered questions about Trump's Covid crisispublished at 08:13 British Summer Time 5 October 2020

    Anthony Zurcher
    BBC North America reporter

    It has been three days since the shocking revelation that Donald and Melania Trump tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

    Since then, the president has been admitted to hospital and a growing number of senior government officials and aides have themselves tested positive.

    As it now stands, there are a number of important questions that remain unanswered.

    When did Trump last receive a negative test? Do we know all the facts about his health? And should Vice-President Mike Pence be isolating?

    Read more about these unknowns and why they matter here.