Victoria Macdonald , Health and Social Care Editor

It is clear that the outcome of the pandemic so far has not been good in the UK, the government’s chief scientific adviser has admitted.

With the economy taking a battering, the government is desperate to get us back into shops and spending again.

The government has announced a further expansion of the testing programme in England focusing on people in jobs with high levels of public contact such as taxi drivers, cleaners and shop staff.

More than 200 scientists have claimed that too little attention has been paid to the role that tiny airborne particles play in transmitting Covid-19. 

“Cowardly”, “unfair” and “a huge slap in the face” –  the response from some in the care sector after the prime minister suggested that “too many” care homes didn’t follow procedures during the height of the pandemic. 

We can reveal that safety concerns have been raised over 85 million expired surgical masks and respirators that were distributed to hospitals, care homes and GPs from the stockpile.

The city today has become the first to enter a local lockdown.

As the number of Covid patients who are critically ill falls, hospitals face the challenge of bringing patients back in for elective surgeries and other vital treatments, while keeping the virus out.

With the focus on getting the economy up and running, there has been a warning that medical research could be “devastated” by the pandemic’s economic effects. 

The 2.2 million people in England most vulnerable to coronavirus, who have been shielding in their homes for three months, have been told they can start to come outside. 

Latest figures from what Boris Johnson has called a “world beating” NHS Test and Trace system also came out today.

China has raised its emergency warning to its second-highest level – cancelling more than 60 percent of flights into Beijing in an effort to control a worrying spike in new Covid cases.

A UK drug trial has announced that a common steroid called dexamethasone, that costs just £5 for an entire course of treatment, has been shown to cut the risk of death by a third for Covid patients on ventilators.

Their parents were told that from their birth, the boys were unlikely to survive. Twin boys from Turkey, joined at the head. 

We have seen a report from a top scientist from 9 March, warning that the UK’s then “mitigation” approach could lead to 1.7 million deaths.