The medical director for Public Health England defended the PHE guidance last week advising NHS staff to wear aprons in some circumstances instead of full-length gowns when the right equipment was not available. Prof Yvonne Doyle said this was a “precautionary set of advice”, based on guidance that already existed and in line with WHO advice covering exceptional circumstances. More than 140,000 firms have today applied for help from the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme. The Resolution Foundation says these applications alone could cost the government £4.2bn. The numbers of people testing positive for coronavirus has stabilised. Prof Dame Angela McLean, the government’s deputy chief scientific adviser, said the figures were “pretty much stable and flat”. UK coronavirus hospital deaths total rises by 449 to 16,509. As of 5pm on 19 April, 16,509 people in hospital who tested positive for coronavirus and died, up by 449 from the day before. Former prime minister Tony Blair’s thinktank has published a potential exit plan from lockdown. Blair told Sky News that an exit strategy was essential because the lockdown would do crippling damage to the economy, government revenues and people’s lives if it were allowed to continue for too long. Here’s the report (pdf) Virgin boss Richard Branson says airline survival depends on government loan. “This would be in the form of a commercial loan - it wouldn’t be free money and the airline would pay it back,” The Virgin Group boss said in a blogpost. Boris Johnson ‘against lifting lockdown over second wave fears’. The prime minister is reported to be cautious about easing the lockdown for fear of sparking a second wave of coronavirus infections. The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, confirmed that the government was reluctant to lift the lockdown for fear of sparking a second wave of infections. Scotland’s first minister and interim chief medical officer have appeared to rule out the resumption of football matches behind closed doors, a move which will increase anxiety at the country’s professional clubs. The vast majority of the Scottish Professional Football League’s sides – including Celtic and Rangers – have used the government’s job retention scheme or implemented pay cuts or deferrals for players and staff. The 2019-20 campaign for the lower three tiers has already been abandoned and the Premiership is heading for the same outcome upon receipt of Uefa approval. The SPFL has been anxious to be in position to start its new season on the first weekend in August as per details of a new broadcasting deal with Sky Sports, worth a record £160m, and season tickets for the 2020-21 season are already widely on sale. The Scottish Football Association even hopes to open a new campaign with its cup semi-finals, which would ordinarily attract an aggregate of at least 80,000 spectators. Both options are now seriously remote, with Nicola Sturgeon also suggesting matches with no spectators would not be viable unless there is a major coronavirus breakthrough. Foster carers across the UK are calling for sick pay during coronavirus pandemic, warning they are currently being forced to chose between their own health, the wellbeing of the foster child, and the need to pay their bills. Foster care workers are as self-employed and have no entitlement to sick pay. A union said that foster carers who develop symptoms risk losing their income if children are therefore not assigned to their care. Jane Wright, chair of the IWGB foster care workers branch, says: Our work is not only more challenging but also more important now than ever. In a pandemic, denial of sick pay threatens to plunge even more of us into poverty. With a six week wait for universal credit, any unwell foster care worker forced to self-isolate risks destitution. They may be unable to pay bills and if they lose their house, their fostered child has nowhere to come home to. One foster care worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said: The government needs to do something. My rent didn’t go down because I was sick. My job didn’t get any easier because I was sick. They took the money right out of my bank account. They treat us like we’re nothing, but who’s feeding this baby? Who’s buying wet wipes and nappies and heating and rent to keep him safe and warm? I’m looking after a vulnerable child. Who’s looking after us? In these extraordinary times, the Guardian’s editorial independence has never been more important. Because no one sets our agenda, or edits our editor, we can keep delivering quality, trustworthy, fact-checked journalism each and every day. Free from commercial or political bias, we can report fearlessly on world events and challenge those in power. Your support protects the Guardian’s independence. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to accurate news and calm explanation. No matter how unpredictable the future feels, we will remain with you, delivering high quality news so we can all make critical decisions about our lives, health and security – based on fact, not fiction. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. Here are the main points from Rishi Sunak’s press conference. Sunak, the chancellor, refused to accept that it might have been a mistake to allow a Champions League match involving Liverpool and Atlético Madrid to go ahead on 11 March – even though a government scientist appeared to concede at the same press conference that the event may have contributed to the spread of coronavirus in the UK. Some 3,000 Atlético fans travelled to Merseyside for the match, at a time when some lockdown measures were already in force in Spain. The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almedia, has said that allowing the fixture to go ahead was a mistake. At the press conference Prof Dame Angela McLean, the government’s deputy chief scientific adviser, was asked if the match should have been cancelled. She appeared to defend the decision to allow it, saying that in normal circumstances a match like that would not be a risk. But then she went on to concede that it might have contributed to the coronavirus spread. She said: However, when you get to the situation of our strange lives as we live them now where we spend all our time basically at home, of course you wouldn’t add on an extra risk of lots and lots of people going off to the same place at the same time. I think it will be very interesting to see in the future when all the science is done what relationship there is between the virus that has circulated in Liverpool and the virus that has circulated in Spain. That’s certainly an interesting hypothesis you raise there. Her comment surprised journalists. For example, this is from ITV’s political editor Robert Peston. And this is from the Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan. But after McLean gave her answer, Sunak was pressed by the Liverpool Echo’s Liam Thorp on whether the government should have allowed the match to go ahead. Sunak refused to accept the decision to allow it might have been a mistake. He said: At every stage in this crisis we’ve been guided by the scientific advice and have been making the right decision at the right time ... Of course, This is an unprecedented situation we’re all dealing with, I’m sure there are all things that we will learn from this. But in terms of the guidance that we put in place, I believe that it was the right guidance at the right time, based on the scientific advice that we were provided with. It would not have been hard to say that, although that decision was based on scientific advice at the time, in retrospect maybe it wasn’t so wise after all. But that would have taken Sunak into “admitting error” territory, somewhere no politician is comfortable venturing to. Prof Yvonne Doyle, the medical director for Public Health England, defended the PHE decision to issue guidance last week advising NHS staff to wear aprons in some circumstances instead of full-length gowns when the right equipment was not available. She said this was a “precautionary set of advice”, based on guidance that already existed and in line with WHO advice covering exceptional circumstances. She said: The guidance remains exactly the same. What has happened over the weekend is to cover people really and give them some security in exceptional circumstances, advice has been produced jointly with the NHS about how to be safe in circumstances where supplies may be at risk. And that is a very precautionary set of advice - it’s quite the opposite to putting people at risk because there aren’t enough supplies. It’s trying to ensure that people are well secured and safe when there may not be enough supplies, and it also stresses how important it is not to take risks and when it is not right to do certain things and practices with the PPE. Doyle said it would be for staff to decide what was safe and what wasn’t. She explained: Certainly people have to make their decisions based on whether they are in a risky situation or not. It is very difficult to legislate for all of that from a distance here. But the guidance is very clear on what is safe and not safe to do. Doyle said a lack of PPE (personal protective equipment) was “a concern” but insisted officials were “working very hard” to improve the situation. Sunak said the government was doing everything it could to address the shortage. He said: We’re improving our sourcing internationally and domestically to make sure we can get the PPE we need in what is a very challenging international context. But people on the frontline can rest assured that we’re doing absolutely everything we can and straining everything we can to get the equipment they need. Sunak said more than 140,000 firms had today applied for help from the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme. The Resolution Foundation says these applications alone could cost the government £4.2bn. (See 5.45pm.) McLean said the numbers of people testing positive for coronavirus had stabilised. The figures were “pretty much stable and flat”, she said. Doyle said the number of people dying from coronavirus was “undoubtedly” higher than the hospital figures implied. The daily global death rate chart released by the government has now been updated to reflect this. (See 5.14pm.) She said 90% of coronavirus deaths were in hospital. Sunak said he did not favour moving from a system where the government backed 80% of coronavirus loans to businesses to one where it backed 100% of those loans. The former chancellor George Osborne is among those who have been pushing for this change, for certain categories of loan. The number of prison staff who have tested positive for Covid-19 rose 40% in three days, a daily update from the Ministry of Justice shows. As at 5pm on Sunday, 194 prison staff across 53 prisons were confirmed to have contracted the coronavirus, compared with 138 in the last available figures for Thursday. The number of prisoners who had tested positive for Covid-19 increased 9% in the same period to 278 inmates across 64 prisons. There are around 81,500 prisoners in England and Wales, in 117 prisons. A total of 13 prisoners are known to have contracted Covid-19 and died, including one inmate who died within prison walls. The government recently announced an extension of testing to prison and probation staff. The Prison Service is to temporarily release up to 4,000 inmates who are within two months of their release date, as well as build 500 cells within the existing prison estate to increase single-cell occupancy. This is from Dan Tomlinson, an economist at the Resolution Foundation thinktank, commenting on what Rishi Sunak said at the press conference about the take-up of the furlough scheme that opened today. (See 5.05pm.) Tomlinson said: The sheer scale of applications for the government’s job retention scheme on its opening day shows just how badly the scheme is needed. Without firms having the option to furlough staff, Britain could be facing the prospect of totally unprecedented numbers of people being unemployed. The claims made today alone are set to cost at least £4.2bn if staff are furloughed for three months. The demand today also indicates that the new IT system has managed to cope with significant claims. The next challenge is to make sure the payments to firms get made as swiftly as possible, as the scheme is very much on the frontline of protecting both firms and family incomes amid a huge economic crisis. Sunak is now wrapping up. As is normal at these events, he ends by repeating the government’s stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives message. And, quoting what Dominic Raab said last week, he says: There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we are not there yet. I’ll post a summary soon. Q: Is this new approach, where you are taking equity in start-ups, something that you will want to maintain long term? Sunak says this is an unprecedented approach. The UK is a European start-ups success story, he says. In the past the government has not needed to do something like this. He says they will keep this policy under review. Q: Do you have any modelling that suggests how people might behave when the lockdown measures are relaxed? That is a good question, says McLean. She says the behavioural scientists who advise the government are careful. If they were here, they would probably say it was difficult to predict. For example, who much will people go back to work when allowed? That is very hard to predict, she says. Q: Was the government too slow to ban major sports events? Sunak says that at every stage the government has followed the scientific advice, and by the need to make the right decisions at the right time. But it has been an unprecedented situation, he says. He says he believes that was the right guidance at the right time. Q: On 11 March Liverpool hosted a match against Atletico Madrid. Subsequently mass gatherings were banned. The mayor of Madrid says now it was a mistake to allow that match to go ahead. Do you agree? McLean says this has to be considered in the context of what the situation was at the time. Normally a football match is not a big risk. But of course you would not allow that now. Q: Can you promise councils that they get a fair funding settlement? Sunak says he used to be a local government minister. Of course he wants to support local government, he says. Q: Some self-employed people are not getting help. Do you see why people back a universal income? And shouldn’t universal credit be more generous? Sunak says the UK’s scheme to help the self-employed is more generous than comparable schemes in other countries. On universal credit, he says people can get advance payments from day one. Q: Tony Blair says he is terrified about the long-term consequences of the lockdown. Do you share that feeling? And is it correct that the Treasury analysis of the impact of the lockdown says there could be long-term damage to the economy, unlike the OBR’s, which was more optimistic? Sunak says any responsible chancellor would have plans in place for a range of scenarios. He says this will be a challenging period. He will not be able to save every job. But he wants to get back to normal as soon as possible. Q: Would you support health staff refusing to work without the proper equipment? Doyle says the guidance is very clear. People have to make a judgment about how to interpret it. But the guidance says what is safe and what is not. Q: Some medical organisations are very worried about the new guidance for PPE issued last Friday. They think these new guidelines are based on equipment availability, not safety? Doyle says the advice is precautionary. She says it is based on guidance that already exists, and on what the WHO says should be done in exceptional circumstances. Q: Do you have an estimate of the cost and the take-up for the furlough scheme? Sunak says the Treasury has not produced its own estimate. The OBR published one last week, he said. (The OBR said the scheme might cost £42bn.) Q: There are suggestions that your death figures understate coronavirus deaths by 40%. Is that accurate? Doyle says the hospital data does not tell the whole story. She says 90% of deaths occur in hospital. But the pattern is different in different parts of the country. Q: The governor of the Bank of England does seem to favour 100% loan guarantees. Why don’t you agree? Sunak says the governor said he wanted money to get to firms quickly. He says the level of support he has introduced is higher than in almost any other country. Q: The PM seems to be making it clear that he won’t relax the lockdown any time soon. Is that right? Sunak says they have been clear that they will follow the scientific advice. In response to a question about the business loan scheme, Sunak says he is not persuaded by arguments saying he should provide a 100% loan guarantee, instead of an 80% loan guarantee. Doyle says it is a “concern” that health workers feel they do not have the PPE they need.