Boost for contact tracing app as Isle of Wight pilot achieves more than 50pc take-up

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For more updates this evening, please head over to our main coronavirus blog. 

Prof Van-Tam was asked whether camping or caravan holidays posed less risk than staying in hotels.

He said: "The two epidemiological concepts that are important in keeping the infection rate down is staying within household groups and minimising the contact between households.

"It is absolutely a ... biological truism that outdoor environments are much less risk than indoor environments.

"But, of course, that will need some careful thinking about because sharing a tent is a small, closed space, with generally poor conditions of ventilation, and I guess it depends who you are sharing it with - same for a caravan.

"So, it is not as straightforward as it might sound ... and it will take some careful thought."

Asked about the ongoing negotiations with Transport for London over a potential rescue package, Mr Shapps says he is 'optimistic' of reaching a solution with the organisation and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

Asked if higher fares could be required in the long-term, he added: "On higher fares, it is very important I think in providing a rescue package for TfL that the London Mayor can work with that we don't end up in a situation where people from outside the capital are unfairly carrying the burden. There is the right balance to be made."

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he did not know how many NHS urgent operations were cancelled in March.

The figures, which were due to be published this morning, were pulled by the Government.

Mr Shapps suggested it could be a matter of "prioritisation" that these figures had not been published but promised to ask Health Secretary Matt Hancock for the data.

Mr Shapps said: "The simple answer is I don't know the answer to that.

"As you rightly say, it is possibly a situation of prioritisation or, as in other cases during coronavirus, the NHS having to put its resources elsewhere in order to get things going.

"That said, I would be surprised if we didn't have a pretty firm knowledge on the number of operations (cancelled) - I do see statistics mentioned, especially in the media, on this all the time."

Prof Van-Tam said the antibody test will be "rapidly rolled out in the days and weeks to come as soon as it is practical to do so".

He said scientists still needed to discover whether antibodies offered immunity and for how long they persisted.

"But the good news is we do now have antibody tests that we absolutely can rely on," he said.

The Transport Secretary said if antibodies provide immunity it would be "game changing because it would enable us to do things in terms of releasing lockdowns that wouldn't be possible otherwise".

Prof Van-Tam said experts would see how socially-distanced training goes before competitive football matches are allowed to return.

"The overall approach with easing social distancing has been one that has been tentative, measured, slow and stepwise, and that is exactly the plan that is under way for all of elite sport - not just football.

"There will be small, carefully measured, stepwise approaches to seeing what can be achieved safely.

"The first of those is, really, is to return to safe training, still observing social distancing and measures are taking place, plans are taking place in quite some depth to be ready to do that, and that will be a stepwise thing.

"We will have to see how that goes before it is time to move on or even think about moving on to the return of competitive football matches."

Mr Shapps is asked when the Government will set out details of how the £600m of funding for infection control in care homes will be allocated, and what further measures will be taken to protect residents from the virus.

Responding, he says that care homes are "actually specialists in infection control" and that they are used to deal with similar issues.

He adds that the majority of care homes have not reported Covid outbreaks, and that the Government has been providing them with support, including PPE. 

However, he is unable to say when further details will be publish, stating only that he expects Matt Hancock to say something on the matter soon.

Asked about what measures the Government planned for students who have to pay for accommodation and take out student loans for this autumn when they may have to study online, Mr Shapps said: "I think it is too early to say.

"The Education Secretary will be returning to this subject and will be providing us all with further guidance.

"I think it is a 'wait and see', but we are absolutely aware of the concerns."

Despite 428 deaths being recorded yesterday, Prof Van-Tam says the seven day average shows a decline which is now "continuing and sustained."

In what is perhaps the most significant slide, Prof Van-Tam says the gradual and constant decline in new hospital admissions is "very good news indeed". 

Across the UK, there has been a 14 percent drop in the number of people in hospital, which he says shows a "move in the right direction". 

Moving on to slide three, Prof Van-Tam says the latest estimates provided by the ONS suggests that 148,000 people were infected with Covid-19 from 27 April to the 10 May. 

That amount to just 0.27 percent of the population. 

He adds that this indicates a "rather low level" of transmission.

Prof Van-Tam highlights that Wednesday's testing figures are the highest on record, with 126,064 provided over 24 hours.

He says the data on new cases shows a "gradual downwards trend". 

 Professor Jonathan Van-Tam is now going through the latest data sets compiled by the Government. 

The first slide shows figures from a new lifestyle survey of Britons, showing that 80 percent of adults during lockdown only left their homes for the four reasons set out by the Government.

That figure rose to 91 percent for adults who avoided contact with vulnerable people. 

Pointing to the remarkable speed in which the NHS Nightingale hospitals were constructed, Mr Shapps asks why it still takes 20 years to build some roads when hospitals can be built in two weeks. 

Going forward, he says a critical lesson from the coronavirus will be working out how red tape can be slashed in order to speed up the construction of major transport links, which will be vital in helping the UK economy bounce back. 

"If GPs' surgeries can move online, why are most rail passengers still travelling on cardboard tickets," he adds.

"We must exploit our new-found capacity to respond at pace and apply it to rapidly improving our infrastructure."

Mr Shapps says that there have been some inadvertent benefits of lockdown, with a huge decrease in rail use allowing 419 Network Rail projects to be completed over the Easter weekend alone.

A further 1,000 upgrades were completed over the May bank holiday, he added.

Meanwhile, Highways England has also been pressing ahead, with the A14 upgrade completed last week - seven months ahead of schedule. 

In the North he says £96m of rail infrastructure projects have been completed in April. 

Altogether, Highways England has completed £250m worth of upgrades, while Network Rail has completed £550m of improvements.

After repeating the key elements of the Government's roadmap out of lockdown, Mr Shapps turns to the steps being taken by ministers to speed up the UK's economy recovery.

Having set aside £2bn of funding for additional for new cycle lanes and road rerouting, Mr Shapps says that £250 million has already been allocated. 

He says local authorities have been given detailed guidance on how to cope with a significant increase in pedestrians and cyclists, public transport providers have been told how to enforce social distancing, and passengers have been informed how they can staff safe.

Kicking off today's press conference, the Transport Secretary says that 2.2 million tests have been carried out in the UK, with a record 126,000 provided over a 24 hour period on Wednesday. 

He adds that 11,041 people remain in hospital, down 14 percent on the figures last week. 

Of those, 428 people have died.

The daily Downing Street briefing is due to start shortly. 

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is leading today's conference, and will be joined by Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, one of the UK's deputy chief medical officers.

Nicola Sturgeon was aware that 25 coronavirus cases had been linked to a secret outbreak at an international conference on the same day she told the public there were only 23 patients across the whole of Scotland.

The Scottish Government said all the cases linked to a conference hosted by sportswear giant Nike at Edinburgh's Hilton Carlton Hotel on February 26 and 27 were confirmed by March 9.

The same day the First Minister told her daily press briefing there were 23 cases across the country and made no mention of the outbreak.

Ms Sturgeon yesterday clarified that only those delegates who were confirmed as having the virus while they were still in Scotland were included in her government's figures.

She reiterated her claim she could not tell the public about the outbreak over fears of patient confidentiality, disclosing that only 10 of the 70 delegates were from Scotland.

But Ian Murray, Labour's Shadow Scottish Secretary, repeated his accusation that she had presided over a cover-up and said the "questions are piling up" over her refusal to tell the public about the outbreak.

You can read more here.

Nigel Edwards of the Nuffield Trust told the Commons health committee that the UK was "way behind where we need to be" in routinely testing NHS staff. 

"I was talking to the chief executive of a teaching hospital in Portugal who are testing their staff much more than weekly, some of them are being tested daily," he added.

Chris Hopson, chief executive officer of NHS Providers, said trusts were still facing "significant problems" around coronavirus testing.

He told the Commons health committee that trusts needed to ensure all staff could be tested in order to restart certain services.

Mr Hopson said: "What our trusts are telling us at the moment is that they cannot guarantee sufficient, reliable and consistent access in a timely way to the tests that they need.

"What we've got is trusts saying to us is that there are still significant problems in terms of laboratory capacity, there are significant problems in terms of access to reagents and chemicals.

"The issue isn't just about the capacity, it's not about 100,000 tests on April 30, what actually really counts on testing is can everybody who needs access to a test get it reliably and consistently, and that's as much about geographic access. 

"In other words, can you get the test close to where you need the test to be performed. It's as much about who are you prioritising for tests, as it is about capacity."

Billions of pounds of spending on infrastructure will lead to "smoother and safer journeys" as the UK recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, Grant Shapps said today.

He said hundreds of millions of pounds has already been spent on upgrades to road and rail networks during the lockdown, and more work is planned over the coming months.

Around 11 million potholes will be repaired as part of a £1.7 billion transport infrastructure investment fund, he added.

On top of this fund, the Government is accelerating more than £175 million of work to be carried out while fewer people are travelling than normal.

Last week, the Department for Transport also unveiled £2 billion in funding to boost sustainable travel.

Mr Shapps said: "There has been a monumental effort in every corner of the country to slow the spread of the virus and protect our NHS.

"However, the battle is not over yet and we urge everyone to keep up the good work and only travel when they need to.

"To help those who do have to use public transport or get out on the roads to do their jobs, we've been accelerating infrastructure upgrades to make sure that, as we gradually reopen our society, everyone can benefit from smoother and safer journeys with better connections for our future."

Giving evidence to the Commons health committee, Nigel Edwards, the CEO of the Nuffield Trust, said many hospitals would struggle to adhere to ensure staff and patients remained two metres apart. 

"Without virtually duplicating emergency capacity, most hospitals I know and have looked at do not have the physical space to do social distancing in their EDs (emergency departments)," he added.

"I'm of the view that we should probably consider the type of approach that's used in Norway and Denmark and the Netherlands where you do not go the the ED unless you have had a referral from an equivalent of the 111 service or a GP, or the ambulance service have decided to take you."

Nadine Dorries and several Conservative MPs who shared a doctored video of Sir Keir Starmer on social media have been reminded of the need to check the "validity of information" before disseminating, Number 10 has said. 

It comes after Ms Dorries was accused of spreading fake news after she shared the clip, which falsely gave the impression that Sir Keir had been reluctant to prosecute grooming gangs when he was director of public prosecutions.

In a statement, a Downing Street spokesman said: "These tweets have rightly been deleted. The MPs involved have been spoken to by the Whips' Office and reminded of their responsibility to check the validity of information before they post on social media sites."

Matt Hancock has confirmed that the Government has surpassed its previous record of 120,000 tests per day, with the number conducted provided yesterday hitting 126,064. 

The news will be welcomed among ministers, who have come under mounting pressure in recent days to explain why tests had fallen significantly after Mr Hancock reached his target at the end of April. 

However, the Government still has some way to go to hit Boris Johnson's latest target of providing capacity for up to 200,000 tests per day by the end of this month.

Just two days after Matt Hancock suggested foreign breaks were off the cards this summer, European Commission vice president Margrethe Vestager said she believed it could still be possible for Britons to head across the Channel. 

Ms Vestager told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: "I think that there's discussion over it at every dinner table in Europe and probably also in the UK.

"We really need a break from this. Can we go as we planned, or will we have to stay within the borders of our home country?

"We think that it can be done safely. And I think it's a very good sign that Germany said yesterday (Wednesday) that they will open their borders towards France and Austria."

NHS patients due to have elective care will be tested before they come to hospital in the future, the chief executive of the Health Foundation has said.

Jennifer Dixon told Parliament's Health and Social Care Committee that hospitals were currently working out how to separate Covid-19 patients from non-Covid-19 patients as they plan for resuming normal services.

She said there could be particular hospitals or wards that are "Covid-free".

Ms Dixon added: "So, patients will be seeing this. They will also be tested significantly before they come into hospital. There's a testing regime that's going to be implemented, already in some places it is there, whereby before you have elective care you will be tested."

People have been urged to keep a diary of who they meet so that if they fall ill with Covid-19 it will be easier to trace contacts.

The idea came from Tory peer Baroness Rawlings in a Lords question time session.

Endorsing the proposal, health minister Lord Bethell said: "You are entirely right.

"We all have an important role to play. There is good evidence that personal tracing and the contact by individuals of their networks has a powerful role in isolating those who may have been in contact with the virus.

"It's going to be the responsibility of everyone in the community, not just digital apps and central databases, in order to defeat this virus."

Speaking in the House of Lords, former Labour minister Lord Hain said patients discharged from hospital were among those facing the lengthy delays at a care home where one of his close relatives lives.

Health minister Lord Bethell did not deny the details of the case raised but claimed the turnaround time for tests is "radically less" in the "vast majority" of cases.

Liberal Democrat health spokeswoman Baroness Brinton also warned that care home organisations have said "many are not getting any results back, a big black hole", adding: "Those that do say 10 days is not unusual and that local resilience forums are not being allowed to get the results either - they cannot plan support."

Lord Bethell claimed Lady Brinton "casts the situation unfairly", adding: "There are undoubtedly cases where test results have taken longer and last weekend we had a laboratory let us down and we did have some delays last weekend."

An average of 148,000 people in England had coronavirus at any given time between April 27 and May 10, according to new estimates by the Office for National Statistics.

The results of the pilot study suggests just 0.27 percent of the community population - excluding health and care workers - were infected with the virus over the period.

However, among people working in healthcare and social care roles, 1.33 percent tested positive for Covid-19.

The estimate is based on swab tests performed on 10,705 people in 5,276 households, but does not include people in hospital or care homes where the ONS says rates of infection are likely to be higher.

The ONS is also running a bigger long-term study to track the spread of Covid-19 in the general population.

The wider study, which will include up to 300,000 people, includes antibody testing to help understand how many people have had Covid-19 in the past.

Downing Street said there had not been a "significant increase" in passengers on the London Underground.

"The position is that Transport for London have not reported a significant increase in passengers on the London network compared to the last few days," the Prime Minister's official spokesman said.

"Initial data for today shows that in London, morning Tube travel was down 93 percent compared to last year, which is broadly in line with the levels for the last week.

"We have not seen any significant increase in travel in the last couple of days."

The Government is in discussions with London mayor Sadiq Khan over a "funding and finance package" for Transport for London, Downing Street has said.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said Cabinet was briefed on Thursday about the negotiations, which were at an "advanced stage".

It comes after the Mayor of London warned that TfL would have to reduce services if it does not receive further funding by the end of today.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "It is a commercial discussion. We remain in close contact with the Mayor and TfL to look at how we can support them.

"Our priority is on reaching an agreement which keeps critical services running for those passengers who must use public transport to get work, ensuring we keep London moving safely.

"That means protecting key routes, rapidly increasing the number of services available and protecting the interests of taxpayers in the long term."

Health minister Nadine Dorries has been accused of spreading "fake news" after sharing a video on social media suggesting Sir Keir Starmer had been reluctant to prosecute grooming gangs when he was director of public prosecutions.

Ms Dorries shared the clip of an interview with the Labour leader in which he appeared to be listing a series of reasons for not bringing charges, writing on Twitter: "Revealing". 

However, Labour said the video had clearly been "doctored" and that he was actually explaining the flaws in previous guidance to prosecutors which he had withdrawn and replaced.

Ms Dorries subsequently deleted her post but has so far failed to apologise. 

Hitting out the health minister this morning, Labour's Wes Streeting said:"What's revealing is that: 1. You've spread fake news and indulged a smear being promoted by the far right. 2. You had time to do this despite being a minister in the Department of Health during a public health crisis.

"It's either malevolence or stupidity. Probably both."

The Scottish First Minister, speaking at her daily briefing, said while the restrictions placed on people were "more difficult with every day that passes" they were still necessary.

Nicola Sturgeon said the lockdown in Scotland was making a difference, adding: "By staying at home we are continuing to slow down the spread of the virus and reduce the number of new cases of it we are seeing every day."

Ms Sturgeon said despite the "really horrible, grim figures" in the daily updates "we are undoubtedly saving lives".

She praised Scots for "continuing to do the right thing", adding: "This truly is a national collective endeavour that all of us are contributing to."

More than 2,000 people have now died in Scotland after testing positive for coronavirus, Nicola Sturgeon said at her daily briefing.

A total of 2,007 patients have died, according to the Health Protection Scotland figures, up by 34 from 1,973 on Wednesday.

The First Minister said 14,117 people have tested positive for the virus in Scotland, up by 188 from 13,929 the day before.

There are 71 people in intensive care with coronavirus or coronavirus symptoms, an increase of one on Wednesday, she added.

There are 1,480 people in hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, a decrease of 54.

Sir Roger Gale has urged visitors to stay away from coastal towns in his constituency and accused the Prime Minister of acting in a "premature" way by lifting travel restrictions.

Authorities responsible for beauty spots including the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales have also expressed concern about the prospect of visitors returning in large numbers.

This weekend will mark the first chance that members of the public have had since the lockdown was imposed to take day trips to the countryside. 

However, Sir Roger, whose North Thanet constituency includes Margate and Herne Bay, said there should be "baby steps" back to normality rather than a "leap in the dark". 

He added: "I have spent 37 years in Parliament promoting the joys of Margate and Herne Bay in my constituency and it breaks my heart to have to say, for the moment, 'please don't come to the seaside: we're still shut'."

The Office for Budget Responsibility has updated its forecast for net borrowing in 2020-21 to £298.4bn, up £25.5bn on its predictions last month. 

Its figures are based on a scenario in which the UK remains in lockdown for three months, followed by partial lifting over another three months.

The OBR has also calculated that the Government's unprecedented package of support will cost £123bn. The latest figures take into account the decision by the Chancellor to extend the furlough scheme. 

The car manufacturer has confirmed it will resume production in June, following the likes of Nissan, Ford and Aston Martin. 

Honda employees have been told that the company will resume production operations at its plant in Swindon from June 1, having been shut since the lockdown began on March 23. 

A new survey by the Office for National Statistics has revealed that 44 percent of companies surveyed only have cash reserves to last half the year.

It also found that 22 percent of companies halted trading over the two weeks between April 20 and May 3.

However, the ONS said fewer than 1 percent of firms surveyed said they have had to permanently close as a result of the coronavirus lockdown.

Speaking to LBC this morning, the Mayor of London warned that TfL will run out of cash today unless it receives a rescue package from the Government. 

With the organisation continuing to run regularly with a significantly reduced number of passengers, he said it would have no choice but to slash services without a bailout. 

"Over the last two months, we've lost more than 90 percent of our fares, advertising is down and so is the congestion charge. We've been spending £600m a month to offer services and get nothing back," he added.

"At the start of this crisis, we had a cash reserve of more than £2.1 bn. That's running out.

"We're required by law to keep two months' worth of money in reserve to pay for services.

"We've been involved in weeks and weeks of negotiations with the government and it is really hard to get support from them.

"Being blunt, today is the last day. Unless the government today gives us confirmation of the grant that we need, the consequences could be quite severe and the implications for all of us will be huge."

Willie Walsh, the head of British Airways' parent company IAG, has written to the Commons transport committee chairman to confirm that the redundancies will still go ahead despite the extension of the furlough scheme. 

In his letter to Huw Merriman, Mr Walsh said: "I was pleased to see the announcement by the Chancellor that the CJRS (furlough scheme) is being extended.

"We commend the Chancellor for his decision and applaud his efforts to breathe some life into a dying economy.

"His actions will provide some additional relief to our people and our business.

"However, we must act now to secure the maximum number of jobs possible, consistent with the reality of a structurally changed airline industry in a severely weakened global economy.

"I want to confirm therefore that we will not pause our consultations or put our plans on hold."

Results of a human trial of a coronavirus vaccine could be available by the middle of June, an expert has said.

Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said "several hundred" people have been vaccinated and the challenge now is to be able to manufacture at scale once it is approved by the regulators.

At the end of April a team of researchers at Oxford started testing a Covid-19 vaccine in human volunteers.

Around 1,110 are expected to take part in the trial, half receiving the vaccine candidate and the other half (the control group) receiving a widely available meningitis vaccine.

Prof Bell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We also want to make sure that the rest of the world will be ready to make this vaccine at scale so that it gets to populations in developing countries, for example, where the need is very great.

"We really need a partner to do that and that partner has a big job in the UK because our manufacturing capacity in the UK for vaccines isn't where it needs to be, and so we are going to work together with AstraZeneca to improve that considerably."

Pressed on the epidemic in care homes this morning, Robert Jenrick acknowledged that the crisis was a "huge challenge" but insisted that the Government was "trying to put as much support as we can around care homes."

He told BBC Radio 5 Live: "I don't deny that what is happening in care homes is absolutely terrible. 

"We are trying to help them to have the best possible infection control practices, we are trying to reduce the amount of rotation and movement of staff between care homes, which is one of the main reasons why the virus is spreading.

He said the additional £600 million promised for homes in England was "to help the alleviate some of those challenges".

The Communities Secretary has this morning claimed he would be prepared to board a packed bus or train to commute to work as the coronavirus lockdown is eased, although he acknowledged overcrowding was a problem.

Asked by BBC Radio 5 Live he would risk going to work on overcrowded public transport, Mr Jenrick said: "Yes, I would do. We have given guidance that to protect yourself and others you could choose to wear a face covering.

"You should be taking precautions like social distancing if you can - I appreciate that isn't always possible and some of the scenes... show buses and tubes too full to be able to sit two metres apart and that's a problem.

"That's one of the reasons why we are trying to encourage as many people as can to drive to work - if they have a car - or to walk or cycle."

It will take months for the NHS to get back to normal because staff are exhausted and there is a huge backlog, three think tanks have concluded. 

While the coronavirus pandemic has gripped the health service, cancer care and routine surgeries have been put on hold as standard services within the NHS have faced widespread disruption. 

Last month, the Government said it was time to start getting these services back up and running, but three think tanks said reorganising as well as the need for more personal protective equipment (PPE) and extra cleaning, meant it would months before the NHS was back fully, according to the BBC.

The think tanks - the Nuffield Trust, King's Fund and Health Foundation - warned staff were exhausted because they had been working flat out and needed time to recover.

It comes as figures released this morning show that A&E attendances in England were down 57 percent in April compared to the same period last year, falling to the lowest figure on record.

You can read more over at our main coronavirus liveblog. 

Data published by location technology firm TomTom shows that the level of road congestion in London at 8am on Thursday was 19 percent, up three percent on the previous week. 

Belfast, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester also saw increases. 

Separately, Transport for London said there were 10 percent more Tube journeys made between 5am and 6am on Thursday than the same period last week, although demand has fallen compared with Wednesday.

The increases appear to coincide with the Government's decision to ease the lockdown in some areas on Wednesday, with employees who cannot work from home encouraged to go back to work.

Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said "75 to 100" children in the UK have been affected by a rare inflammatory disease linked to coronavirus.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that while parents should be aware of the illness, they do not need to be "too concerned".

"We can count the number of children that have died with coronavirus on the fingers of two hands, compared to over 30,000 in adults. And that tells us most of what we need to know," he said.

"This is a new syndrome. It appears to be happening mostly after coronavirus infection, we believe it's where the body's immune system overreacts to coronavirus."

He said there were "very few cases, 75 to 100 across the country", adding: "The important thing to say is most are being treated well, many are going home, most haven't gone to intensive care units."

Jeremy Hunt said that ministers had not been thinking about the importance of testing prior to the coronavirus crisis due to an "over-focus" on pandemic flu.

"I think the practical thing that we can all see needed to have happened was to make sure that everyone discharged from hospitals into care homes was tested for Covid before they were sent to a care home," he told the Today programme.

"But because we didn't have that testing capacity at the time, it wasn't possible to do that.

"In retrospect, and I have responsibility for this as someone who was health secretary for six years, because we were over-focussed on pandemic flu, and not on pandemic SARS-like viruses, we haven't been thinking for some time about the importance of testing.

"And had we done that, and that's why I think transparency over scientific advice is so important, then maybe some of these things could have been avoided."

Jeremy Hunt told the Today programme that it is "pretty clear now" that community testing should not have been abandoned on March 12.

The former health secretary said: "I think it's very important not to finger point at the individuals, and I think the Government is getting excellent scientific advice.

"But actually, to ask why it is that Sage, the Government's scientific advisory committee, didn't model the South Korean test, track and trace approach that we are now adopting right at the beginning?

"The Government was given two very extreme options, the sort of extreme lockdown we're just coming out of, or kind of mitigated herd immunity.

"And that middle way, the South Korean route, wasn't modelled."

The former health secretary, who now chairs the Commons health committee, has criticised the Government over delays in processing tests. 

It comes amid reports that some people being forced to wait more than a week to receive their results, with The Telegraph revealing that tens of thousands of samples had been sent to the US. 

Mr Hunt told the Today programme: "The thing that will get public confidence behind this is if they know it is happening fast, and the lock-jam at the moment is that it is taking much too long for the test results to come back.

"If you call up because you have got Covid symptoms, you really need test results back in 48 hours.

"Within that window, we need to contact everyone who you have been near in the last three or four days.

"That's really got to happen very, very fast, otherwise there's no point."

After Sir Keir Starmer suggested ministers had been "too slow" to intervene to prevent outbreaks in care homes, Edward Argar this morning denied that the Government had received "bad advice".

Between February 25 and March 12, official advice published on gov.uk stated that the chances of residents being infected was "very unlikely", despite Italy already being in the grip of the pandemic.

However, Mr Argar strongly rejected suggestions that ministers had been failed by their scientific and medical advisers.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I completely refute the assertion that it was bad advice, or it was poor advice.

"We have some of the best scientists in the world modelling this and giving us the advice."

"If you think back to February or March, every day we were learning, and scientists were learning, something new about how it behaved and that it didn't always behave exactly the same way in different countries.

"The second point is that, of course, Italy was, as we recognised, ahead of us in terms of the curve and that community transmission. They did this at a point where they had, and it was shown they had, community transmission and that was one of the reasons that caused them to make that change.

"We didn't at that point, and that's why when we did have the evidence of that we then made the appropriate changes."

The Government is not yet in a position to roll out the new antibody tests to the public, health minister Edward Argar said.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "It has only just got the green light.

"Obviously we will have had kits to test, but we are not in a position at this point to give these tests out.

"So we're not in a position yet to roll it out to the public and have those tests ready to go."

The Government has hit back at claims that it has "abandoned" care homes, amid mounting pressure from Sir Keir Starmer and other opposition MPs over the failure to protect residents from the coronavirus.   

On a day that is likely to focus on care homes, health minister Edward Argar was pushed by Sky News on the Government's handling of social care settings. 

Responding, he said it was "completely wrong" to say ministers had ignored or "deprioritised" care homes. 

However, in a later interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he acknowledged that more needed to be done to make testing available to care home residents.

"There is still some capacity there that we need to put in... make available, I should say, to care homes to make sure everyone can access it quickly," he added.

"To make sure they get their results back quickly so they know when they have someone who didn't test negative - that's fine.

"Or when they have someone who has tested positive, they know to use that... if they are accepting a discharge back to the care home, they know to put in place those isolation rules and those isolation procedures."

Here is our front page today. 

A coronavirus antibody test kit has been approved by Public Health England (PHE), The Telegraph has learned, in a breakthrough that could be key to easing the UK's lockdown restrictions.

The Telegraph understands that the Department of Health is in negotiations with the Swiss healthcare company Roche to buy millions of the kits.

The accuracy of the test was given approval by experts at PHE’s Porton Down facility last week. 

On Wednesday night, Roche said it stood ready to provide hundreds of thousands of laboratory-based tests to the NHS each week. A Government source said: "We want to get our hands on as many of these as possible."

The development of an accurate antibody test has long been seen as key to helping Britain get back to work, with Boris Johnson having previously described such tests as "game-changing".

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