Zoe Kleinman
Technology reporter, BBC News

Apple says it did not know the UK was working on a "hybrid" version of the National Health Service coronavirus contact-tracing app using tech it developed with Google.

The firm took the unusual step of saying it was also unaware of an issue regarding distance-measuring, which was flagged by Health Secretary Matt Hancock in Thursday's daily briefing.

Apple said it was "difficult to understand" the claims.

Downing Street said the government had "worked closely with Apple and Google".

In tests carried out in the UK, there were occasions when software tools developed by Apple and Google could not differentiate between a phone in a user's pocket 1m (3.3ft) away and a phone in a user's hand 3m (9.8ft) away.

During the briefing, Mr Hancock said: "Measuring distance is clearly mission critical to any contact-tracing app."

However, speaking to the Times, Apple said: "It is difficult to understand what these claims are as they haven't spoken to us."

Read more here.

Image source, PA Media

We will be hearing from the UK government shortly with its daily briefing on coronavirus.

But while we wait, read our guide on how the Covid-19 alert system in the UK works on the day the level is lowered from four to three.

Image source, Getty Images

Earlier, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he intended for all children in England to return to school full-time in September.

There's been some reaction to his plan. The head of the Association of School and College Leaders, Geoff Barton, said there had been an "information black hole" from the government.

Schools and colleges are preparing for two scenarios in the autumn, he said - one with rotas to stagger the return of pupils and another with bringing back pupils five days a week.

And in a statement,, external the National Education Union said "the prime minister's hopes are not enough".

“He needs a plan for more teachers, to ask teachers who have left the profession to return, and he needs to be finding extra spaces in which they can teach smaller groups.

"We need to use the ingenuity that produced the Nightingale hospitals to produce the extra spaces we need."

It added: "If the requirements of social distancing are reduced even to 1m, then most schools could not have 30 children in a classroom."

Image source, Reuters

We should be hearing from the UK government in the next 30 minutes but let’s take a look at the latest from the country first:

• A further 173 people who tested positive with coronavirus have now died in the UK, bringing the total number of deaths to 42,461
• The UK’s Covid-19 alert level has been reduced from four to three
• Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a £1bn fund to help England's children catch up on what they have missed while schools have been closed
• Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford announced a number of changes to lockdown, including ending travel restrictions on 6 July
• New rules on meeting members of different households in Scotland have come into effect
• The Northern Ireland Executive confirmed it would extend its free school meals scheme during the summer break

America continues to be the epicentre of the global pandemic, with nearly 2.2m cases and 118,000 virus-related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Here are some of the biggest developments from across the country:

• Several states - including Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona and South Carolina - continue to post record-breaking numbers of cases, as many local authorities push ahead with easing lockdown measures
• Despite concerns among some local officials, President Trump is planning to hold a public rally in the Oklahoman city of Tulsa on Saturday. Organisers say attendees will be given masks but their use will not be compulsory
• California is the latest state to make face coverings compulsory in public spaces. Former Governor and Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger has shared his support for the measure, tweeting that "anyone making it a political issue is an absolute moron", external
• One of America's top coronavirus experts, Dr Anthony Fauci, has told AFP news agency he can't see the country returning to lockdowns despite infection rates remaining high

It was thought coronavirus could infiltrate at least nine in 10 care homes in England during the pandemic, experts warned in April.

At least 90% of homes were expected to have at least one case if transmission rates stayed stable, according to a paper sent to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) which advises the government.

The authors of the paper, from the University of Manchester, found reported outbreaks of coronavirus in care homes "rose rapidly" in early to mid-March before plateauing from late March.

The paper also suggested staff working in multiple care homes could be spreading the virus between them.

Yolande Knell
BBC Middle East correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

Israel's government is taking strict action to curb further infections after a spike in cases across the country.

More than 500 soldiers have been put into isolation. Three Bedouin neighbourhoods in southern Israel, where there is a high infection rate, have been placed under lockdown and new controls have been introduced in parts of Tel Aviv.

The occupied West Bank reported a surge in cases after easing their lockdowns in the past month. Palestinian health officials say that the past two days have seen the largest increases in cases since the pandemic began, and shops and businesses have been temporarily closed in Hebron.

With the number of infections climbing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the economy will not reopen further for now.

Image source, Reuters

We have just had it confirmed that the UK government will give its daily briefing at 17:00 BST (16:00 GMT).

The briefing will be a solo event, with Education Secretary Gavin Williamson taking the lead.

There will be no scientists or experts joining him.

James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

The UK is now publishing "growth rates" to measure the spread of coronavirus.

The figures tell us how fast cases are rising or falling.

Across the UK, the growth rate is estimated at between -2% and -4% per day. As the number is negative it means cases are falling.

So for every 100 new cases on Friday you would expect around 97 new cases on Saturday, around 94 on Sunday and so on.

The growth rate is thought to be negative in every region of England.

Only in London is there a small chance cases are growing.

The range is from -5% to +1% but on balance cases are thought to be falling in the capital too.

The growth rate is related to the R number that has been reported for months. The R number for the UK is between 0.7 and 0.9 - anything below 1.0 means the epidemic is shrinking.

Sean Coughlan
BBC News, education correspondent

The billion pound school catch-up plan for England aims to drag the return-to-school policy out of a quagmire of indecision.

Parents have been increasingly baffled by how few pupils have returned to school this term, confused by what would be offered over the summer and downright horrified at the idea that schools might not even go back full-time in September.

And head teachers' leader Geoff Barton said it was like operating in an "information black hole".

So has this juggernaut of cash put the show back on the road?

It's a lot of money - but it has to tackle massive disruption to almost nine million children in primary and secondary schools.

First of all, there's no mention of extra summer activities. And nothing yet to explain how pupils might all go back in September.

The big focus is on private tutoring - and for schools, there is no such thing as a free launch.

But how much tutoring will the funding buy? Read Sean's analysis in full here.

A leading health official in the Americas has told the BBC that taking dexamethasone without a prescription could be dangerous.

Dexamethasone is the cheap steroid recently found to reduce the mortality rate of Covid-19 patients who are already severely ill in hospital.

Dr Jarbas Barbosa, assistant director of the Pan-American Health Organization, told BBC OS that "in certain circumstances, it can worsen the response of the body to the virus".

"If you take it at the beginning of the infection, or if you have another infection that isn't Covid-19, it can worsen the situation," he said.

"Unfortunately, in many countries in Latin America, you can buy dexamethasone and other medicine without a prescription, so it's very important for national authorities to state this very clearly."

As the pandemic progresses, scientists have been closely tracking the R (reproduction) number, which is the average number of people that one infected person will pass the virus on to.

At the moment the R number for the UK is between 0.7 and 0.9.

If R is higher than one, then the number of cases increases exponentially - it snowballs like debt on an unpaid credit card.

But if the number is lower, the disease will eventually peter out, as not enough new people are being infected to sustain the outbreak.

Read more about the R number and how it is calculated here.

Image source, Getty Images

Turkey is imposing a partial curfew for Saturday and the following weekend, after a surge of coronavirus infections that followed the general lifting of restrictions two weeks ago.

The government says its aim is to safeguard up to four million students taking high school and university entrance exams.

Essential shops and some businesses will remain open, but the authorities hope the measures will stop large crowds gathering on the streets. The number of exam centres has been increased, and students must wear new masks when entering.

Turkey has introduced other new restrictions over recent days. The authorities say they had been expecting the increase in the number of infections, but Turkey’s medical association says it’s alarmed by the upward trend.

Simon Read
Business reporter

Shorts and raincoats have been snapped up as returning shoppers in the UK kept one eye on the unpredictable weather.

M&S said nine out of 10 bestselling menswear items were shorts, while it flogged 1,000 raincoats in the first few days of reopening.

There's been a huge demand for men's socks ahead of Father's Day.

John Lewis said TV sets were also popular perhaps as buyers bagged new sets in time for the football season's kick off.

Read the full piece on what people have been buying here.

Image source, Getty Images

Official figures from the UK government, external show a daily rise of 173 deaths of people with coronavirus - that's higher than Thursday's figure which was 135. This takes the total to 42,461.

The individual nations have also been announcing their own totals. Those figures differ to the UK government's total because of variations in the time-frame used to record deaths.

In Wales a further four people have died, while Northern Ireland reported one new death.

Scotland announced its daily figures earlier, with a further six deaths.

Image source, Reuters

Earlier, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked about the news that the country's debt was now larger than the size of its economy for the first time since 1963.

It comes after government borrowing surged to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Johnson said: "It matters hugely but we will manage our finances as sensibly and prudently as we can.

"What I will say is I think the British economy is remarkably resilient, we will come out of this well in the end but there will be some difficult times ahead."

He added: "There has been a massive lack of economic activity for a very long time - of course that is going to be a painful and expensive to make up. But we are a very creative and dynamic society, we will come back."

Read more on the UK's debt here.

Image source, Getty Images

Florida recorded 3,207 coronavirus cases on Thursday - its highest daily rise, and its fourth record-setting figure in just over a week.

The US state is one of the worst affected in the country since an outbreak was first discovered in March. Nearly 86,000 infections and 3,061 deaths have been reported.

Despite its rising toll, the state's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has said there are no plans to scale back on measures to reopen in the economy.

DeSantis has credited expanded testing for the rise in cases. But a study by the University of Pennsylvania has concluded that Florida has “all the markings of the next large epicentre of coronavirus transmission".

Reality Check

UK Foreign Office minister James Cleverly was on the BBC's Question Time programme last night. He said: “We now have a testing system which tests huge numbers of people on a daily basis – hundreds of thousands of people.”

But the government has not published daily figures for how many people are being tested for coronavirus in the UK for nearly a month - so we can’t check this.

The last figure published on 22 May was 80,297 people tested, which was the largest number of people the government had reported testing in a day – but still some way short of “hundreds of thousands” of people.

Remember that the number of people tested is not the same as the number of tests conducted, because some people need more than one test, and some tests, such as the ones carried out for the Office for National Statistics infection survey, do not count as people tested.

Read more on testing and the government’s targets here.

Alison Roberts
Portugal Correspondent, Lisbon

Image source, Reuters

Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa says the death of a doctor believed to be the country's first to die after contracting Covid-19 highlights the need for adequate funding for healthcare.

In a note of condolence to the man's family and friends, he said his death called not only for "words and recognition" for someone who made "the supreme sacrifice", but for "adequate resources" within the health service.

The 68-year-old doctor, who reportedly caught the virus from a colleague and had no known associated risk factors, had been in a Lisbon hospital for 40 days before dying on Wednesday in its intensive care unit, the ministry of health said on Friday.

He died just hours before PM Antonio Costa hailed the announcement that the country had been chosen to host the final rounds of football's European Champions League as "a deserved prize for health professionals".

The president of the National Doctors' Federation, Noel Carrilho, said "health professionals don't want medals nor football games", but "to be recognised in the way that is normal in any profession, with better working conditions".

According to the rival Independent Union of Doctors, there arecurrently more than 600 doctors infected with the virus, considerably more than the government is reporting.

The most recent official figures, from last Friday, show 3,556 health professionals as infected, including 505 doctors.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have visited two independent businesses in Norfolk, near the Queen's Sandringham Estate in England, to hear how they have been affected by the coronavirus lockdown.

Prince William went to Smiths the Bakers, which reopened its 50-year-old shop in King's Lynn on Monday after being shut for 11 weeks.

Staff told him how the restrictions had impacted the family firm, with 80% of its wholesale customers having to close operations.

The duke also told staff that he had "done a little bit of baking" during the lockdown.

"The children have been attacking the kitchen and it's just been an explosion of flour and chocolate everywhere," he said. "Catherine's been doing quite a bit of baking."

Catherine visited Fakenham Garden Centre, which had to close for seven weeks during the lockdown. She heard about the social distancing measures the centre had implemented to make sure shoppers stayed safe.