the beds and equipment are ready staff
are being recruited but it has perhaps a
tribute to the NHS that so far no
patients have arrived at the Excel
centers Nightingale hospital speaking
remotely from Scotland where he's
recovering from coronavirus Prince
Charles acknowledged the amazing feat of
putting this all together in nine days
this hospital therefore offers us an
intensely practical message of hope for
those who will need it most at this time
of national suffering and it was
announced today that his mother the
Queen will make a broadcast to the
nation on Sunday evening across the
country other field hospitals like this
are being prepared there is an urgency
now the warning by experts that we are
just two weeks behind Italy another stay
at home message from the prime minister
himself still in isolation ahead of a
sunny weekend everybody may be getting a
bit stir-crazy there may be just a
temptation to get out there hang out and
and start to break the regulations and I
just urge you not to do that the latest
official figures are 3605 deaths across
the UK to 5 p.m. yesterday
yet there are time lags and hospitals
reporting these and they don't include
community deaths so the true toll is
going to be higher the pressure is to
test now more and faster and the health
secretary acknowledged this yesterday
promising a hundred thousand a day by
the end of the month we've now got a
commitment to go even further we want to
see clear community testing and contact
tracing because that's the way in which
you break the chains of transmission of
this virus that's how we can escape what
could be endless cycles of lockdown so
it's good that more testing is coming
online
but we need a lot more of it too but
Matt Hancock has a way with figures ten
days ago he said had ordered 3.5 million
antibody tests to see if you've had the
virus
none of these so far work yet today he
threw out another extra
ordinary figure we we have provisionally
ordered 17 and a half million not three
and a half million antibody tests but as
I've been absolutely clear all along we
will only use them if they work he
clarified they have not paid for all of
them yet in the meantime the government
has now published a call for covered 19
complete tests which can range from
something like this to these sambar to a
rapid diagnostic test developed by a
Cambridge University spin-out company
the test is the size of a coffee machine
it's very easy to operate it only takes
one sample at a time but essentially you
take a take a swab it's put into a fluid
which in activates the virus amede
five minutes that is then loaded into
the machine and it's a closed system so
there's no risk of infection or aerosol
and then you get a readout at the end of
it there's a camera installed it within
the machine which interprets the result
for you and it's fed directly to an iPad
which there's positive or negative
within 90 minutes the current PCR swab
tests used on hospital patients and in
these drive through NHS staff testing
stations can be highly unreliable one
frontline doctor warned by as much as 30
percent not helped he said by the lack
of personal protection equipment or PPE
which means staff are too nervous to
take proper samples from the back of the
throat in case the patient coughs
because these tests are as good as we
have at the moment but are not perfect
and because there is this false negative
rate the reality is that this can affect
the quality and safety of the care we
deliver to patients we're telling our
junior staff now if a patient looks like
they're infected and they have clove at
19 then treat them as kovat 19
regardless of the swab results back in
this Cambridge lab they have however
answered the government's request for
universities to help with the testing
we've come up with a method that we've
adapted so we can extract the samples
more quickly so we can improve that
process and therefore we can add a
little bit more capacity by doing things
with a little bit more of
a quicker turnaround time and it is
clear that the government's attitude now
is that every little bit helps because
although it's hard to believe it is only
30 days since the first person in the UK
died from covered 19 well earlier I
spoke with the government's newly
appointed testings are professor John
Newton I began by asking him if the
government stated target of 100,000
tests to be carried out a day is a
realistic one it is it is realistic we
have some really good progress we're
using tried and tested technology this
is not innovation it's massive
industrial scale rollout of these three
big mega labs in Milton Keynes
Manchester and Glasgow and they're
already delivering tests many thousands
of tests today and we are really looking
forward to seeing that number go up soon
there'd be lots of different targets
that you know the Prime Minister said
250 thousand tests a day is that still
doable in your view well the Secretary's
target that he announced in the last
couple of days is it's a stretching
target and it's based on the requirement
for the swab tests so we need to get the
swab test out so that we can get the
most effective response to the to the
pandemic the requirement for very large
numbers of antibody tests I mean we're
talking about millions of tests that
comes slightly later so we have got a
little bit of time to get the best
antibody test possible and then those
will be available in their million
I just want to press you on the link
between the scale of deaths and the lack
of testing compared to other countries
as we look at the UK we've got 43 deaths
per Mille in a population from this
South Korea just three Germany just
twelve are you not concerned that our
the lack of speed and urgency on testing
has cost lives I don't think you can
make that I do think you can make that
direct comparison the situation is
clearly very different in South Korea
from it is here in the UK sadly and
there must be a number of reasons for
that the availability of testing is an
important component and we used it
extensively in the
early days when the public health
approach was very successful in
containing and delaying the onset of the
pandemic in the UK and that certainly
helped hugely in preparing allow
immunity s to prepare for the rise in
cases just talking about the antibody
test that you spoke of the test to see
if people have had the disease and are
therefore immune possibly the UK
government says it's bought three and a
half million antibody tests from whether
the UK government has taken options on a
wide on a number of tests and it's more
than that understand it's many more than
ten million tests the options on these
tests but that subject to evaluation
them to see if they are good enough to
be used in large numbers so we've got
options on the test we're not currently
in possession of those tests and ready
to roll them out well we have we have
the option to use them if we want to use
them so it's the so the the the
arrangement is that those tests are
potentially available if the testing had
showed that they were the right tests
and the tests that were performed well
enough for us to want to use them at
large scale then they would have been
available but in fact the testing
unfortunately showed that they didn't
perform well enough and we are working
now to try and develop a test working
with manufacturers to improve that to
improve the test performance so the
10-million are currently working none of
the none of the tests that have been
tested so far perform they all work to
some extent but they don't perform in
the UK setting as well as we would like
them to if I said John Newton thanks
very much thank you what I'm now joined
by our health and social care
correspondent Victoria McDonald and
Victoria brings up to date well I feel
like I should start by apologizing
because it is technically my job to work
our way through these government
messages and so on but they keep
throwing out these random numbers we
heard that there were going to be 3.5
million antibody tests as you said just
then and we heard his response was 10
million then just an hour later in the
darling street press conference Matt
Hancock the health tech
Terry said seventeen point five million
antibody tests now let's get clear about
these antibody tests currently we
haven't found that they work the other
thing about them is the trialing of them
I was told today takes can take up to
six months because you need to keep
testing the patient all the way through
for about six months to make sure that
they have developed those antibodies so
this is a long way off anyway there was
some good news out of the darling street
press conference there are face masks
that critical issue do we wear them they
said no there is no evidence that it
helps with the spread and we know the
w-h-o the World Health Organization is
also looking at this but for the moment
they're not recommending them the other
thing is there are some amazing national
clinical trials going on we were told
including using chloroquine now in the
Cambridge University lab that I was in
earlier today they're doing some of
these trials and they're looking quite
good for the treatment of patients as
well as using some antiviral medications
they are asking for more volunteers if
anybody out there feels like doing this
they really want bigger trials because
the bigger trials as the health
secretary said today the better the data
and very sadly we've heard today of the
death of another for health works
frontline workers what is the mood among
NHS staff you can't believe how much
this impacts on the NHS staff they feel
it really personally because there is
this idea of a family we will hear live
from a hospital in East London Mita and
the extraordinary testament of an ICU
consulted to Newport who's just
recovered from the virus and is back on
the front line and we will follow a
nurse who is one of one of those at the
epicenter of the epidemic in Lombardy
Victoria thanks very much Chris
Debenhams has expected to become the
latest high-profile business casualty of
the coronavirus crisis the firm which
was already in financial difficulties is
likely to go into administration next
week putting thousands of jobs at risk
and as hundreds of thousands of
businesses faced a funding crisis the
government has instructed banks to stop
offering firms their own loans before
allowing access to
government-backed scheme our business
and global trade correspondent Paul
McNamara reports not long ago this was a
thriving business now it's fighting for
survival in desperate need of a loan the
Chancellor promised I've got twenty five
thousand pounds worth of bills stacking
up to pay and I'm still on hold to the
boat bank trying to get a loan every day
for the last eight days Ruina has called
her bank spending up to four and a half
hours on hold she's still waiting for a
callback and a lifeline I am frustrated
and angry at the situation I do
understand that we're all meeting
challenging times but not being able to
even get through not and having no
information to manage my expectations
for me to be able to make decisions upon
at all this is ridiculous this is a
story that's been echoed across the
nation more than two weeks ago the
Chancellor announced a 350 billion
pounds economic injection including
loans to businesses as of yesterday
fewer than a thousand loans had been
handed out despite 130,000 inquiries now
the schemes been revamped banks can't
put their own products first and any
company can now apply for the government
back loans not just those refused an
ordinary bank loan banks have been
banned from asking people to guarantee
loans of up to two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds with their own houses or
savings and the scheme has been open up
to bigger firms we turnovers between
forty five and five hundred million
pounds once again banks are in the
firing line shops restaurants tens of
thousands of other businesses say that
they either can't get through or when
they do they're offered the bank's loans
and not the government's the bank's
claim that they're trying to work as
fast as they can to get this scheme up
and running and that they wanted the
Chancellor to change the rules so they
had to offer the government's loans
first but once again it's left many with
a sense there when it comes to social
responsibility there is a major deficit
in the one industry whose business it is
to extend credit banks are on the side
of business they say and cash has been
distributed as fast as possible
25 million pounds has been distributed I
was up 55 million pounds in a single day
on the day before I bought kill the
court when I was running mulberry in the
mid 90s here's one business hoping help
is on its way soon this designer retail
outlet is owned by the man who founded
the luxury fashion brand mulberry this
week after nearly five decades of
business success his loan application
was turned down the new announcements
are welcomed below just saw his
reservations these loans are just
numbers on a banker's screen says Roger
their life millions of sorry no no right
on it Freddie my son who's my CEO over
at kill the court the conversation he
had to have with one of our employees
with on the phone with children the
background having to make every tangent
next week the Chancellor is meeting with
Bank bosses to get the money moving if
businesses are to survive long enough to
see the day people are finally allowed
back into them it needs to move fast now
daily updates of the rising number of
deaths from covered 19 are a terrifying
reminder of the message to stay at home
for the family of the youngest victim
yet more pain as 13 year old ishmael
muhammad abdul wahab mother is forced to
stay away from his funeral because two
of his younger siblings are showing
signs of having the virus and two more
nurses died from the virus our chief
correspondent Alex Thompson has their
stories by its own admission the
government's struggling to play catch-up
regarding testing for this virus quite
properly NHS staff first in line
the driving test centers sprouting up in
car parks across the UK but even as they
do some are falling victim to Kovac 19
they're often young and with no other
apparent health issues Ahriman a screen
was just 36 and leaves three children
she was a staff nurse at Walsall manor
hospitals acute medical unit it's
something as the chief nursing officer
head of my profession I would never
wanted to talk about at all of a
talented nurse of a loving mother and
today we are very sad to see a loss of
one of my professional colleagues she
was awarded just last year for her
outstanding contribution to equality
diversity and inclusion in health and
social care
ARIMA died in intensive care on a
ventilator in the early hours of this
morning in a social media post her
friend Ruby described her as the
loveliest person you could meet he went
above and beyond for everyone she met
it's believed that a Rima did not
contract the virus at her work also a
mother of three 39 year old nurse Amy O
Rock died last night at the Queen
Elizabeth Hospital in Margate where she
worked again in the acute medical unit
the chief nurse at East Kent hospital's
praised her commitment to both patients
and colleagues there's a lot more kind
of viral load you get the closer you are
to people the more that they will be
kind of depositing the virus over you
and that's actually where nurses are all
the time they are very close to people
delivering care and that contact he's
unavoidable in nursing we don't know
what problems if any either of these
nurses encountered with any lack of
protective equipment but the Royal
College of Nursing says this remains a
serious problem the fact remains that
the supply line has got to improve and
ensuring that that supply line is
consistent over a period of time because
the the kit will be used a lot obviously
it will be in high demand
on Monday the virus claimed its youngest
UK victim 13 year old Ismail Mohamed
Abdel Wahab at this London Hospital two
of his siblings have since developed
symptoms so that means his mother was
barred from her son's funeral today just
as his illness meant she couldn't visit
him on his deathbed in hospital and in
the past two hours the government has
announced two carers have also died
today they gave no further details
leaving the chief nursing officer to
express concern that these deaths will
not be the last of frontline NHS staff I
worry that there's going to be more and
I want to honor them today and recognize
their service so as the death rate from
the virus gets worse before getting
better as it assuredly is doing the
hazard of delivering frontline acute
medicine will be tragically clear as we
continue to lose those committed to
looking after us well now from hospital
in East London we're joined by a doctor
Amica or corrosive AME doctor and his
colleagues doctor how are you all
feeling today as more of your colleagues
are lost to this virus it's obviously
while the news progresses that puts us
in a very difficult situation because
I'm speaking on myself
and on behalf of my colleagues it's very
very difficult coming in to work knowing
that you want to do the best for your
patients but knowing you're putting your
yourself and your family at risk and I
think that's something that we're all
dealing with at the moment we're all
trying to that kind of process exactly
what's going on is it's almost like
doing an internal kind of ethical debate
about what the risks are to ourselves
now as well as our patients in this it's
quite a difficult time for us is it
frightening going into work now
honestly I I really want to tell you
that we're carrying on smiling and going
into workers normal life I feel like I'd
be lying and I wouldn't represent
exactly what we're already feeling there
is you can tell there's a power
type of anxiety amongst all of us as we
gave these stories of our colleagues
nationwide falling victim to the
stillness we do feel frightened for
ourselves and our families and you can
see that we're taking extra measures to
make sure that we are protected and our
patients are protected too because I am
human like the rest of my colleagues so
we do worry at times we do worry could
this be us next and it's not something
you really want to think about where
your main goal is to be thinking about
the patient in front of you and what is
the situation for your patients sorry
what is the situation for your patients
on the ward so for our patients on the
ward it's kind of how it's been for the
last number of days we're seeing more
and more patients come in we're getting
tested patients more and more and we're
seeing more positive cases we've had a
few that I've had that pronounced today
unfortunately and it's another it's
another scenario where it's so difficult
to speak with the patients and their
families obviously because we know that
they found these can't come in and have
the chats that we normally have on the
ward we can't have the chatting with the
patients in the manner that we normally
have them with them on the ward and this
this makes everything a lot more
difficult patients are very worried
about if they're positive or not
families are very worried about if their
parents and simply into a positive and I
and it's something we're going to have
to go through every day unfortunately
and the statistics are correct the
expectation has to be that there will be
more cases of many more deaths in the
coming days do you feel in your hospital
that you are able to cope with that rise
I feel that this is something that many
of us actually have predicted obviously
we're on the front lines seeing these
patients every day so we get an accurate
number of just how many you click in
just how many test positive so I think
mentally it's something that we've
checked into as in okay this is what the
scenario is gonna be we're gonna have to
find a way to handle it we are the NHS
you are resilient system how we will get
through this but at the same time we're
thinking
do we have enough suppliers to cope with
this mentally will we get through this
where we have enough beds where we have
lots ventilators what will the
escalation plans be what will we do with
the families of these people is
something that does go for all our lives
every day and we're just hoping and
praying for the best thank you very much
thank you thank you very much indeed for
everything you're doing and we're
talking to us tonight
now cases and deaths from Kovac 19 are
continuing to rise alarmingly in the
United States with New York State alone
reporting over 564 Tallinn seas in one
day the Center for Disease Control is
expected to suggest all Americans wear a
mask outside yet health care workers are
still saying they don't have enough
personal protective equipment our
Washington correspondent Siobhan Kennedy
reports
this is not the back of a supermarket
depo these are not delivery trucks
they're parked outside Bellevue Hospital
in New York and they're waiting for the
dead the refrigerated lorries can hold
as many as 3600 bodies they say they
don't need them now the city's morgues
not yet full but it may not be long
New York is in crisis help New York it's
a matter of days before New York runs
out of life-saving ventilators the
governor today saying he signed an
executive order to force private
hospitals in his state to immediately
hand over their spares I'm not going to
let people die because we didn't
redistribute ventilators the National
Guard are going to be deployed to pick
up these ventilators which are all
across the state and deployed them to
places where we need them it's not just
ventilators as the number of infections
saw medics on the frontline of running
out of the protective gear they need to
stay safe we are demanding that we get
all the hoarded supplies that exists of
PPE so that we can protect ourselves our
families we can't do it if we're dead
president Trump says they're doing all
they can but no one seems to believe him
not even his favorite American football
team the New England Patriots which sent
its own jet to collect 1.7 million masks
from China to give to New York it was
having to wear the same mask for a week
that dr. Frank Gabriel in New York
believes led him to contract the corona
virus he said it was me using the same
mask for four days in a row that
infected me and he said the timing is
perfectly correlates with me developing
symptoms in nine to ten days he said
prepare it's coming to you his best
friend Deborah said she spoke to him on
Sunday the 28th of March when he was at
home isolating with his husband who also
contracted the virus then on Tuesday
morning just three days later
Frank's husband called speaker and we
both were talking to Frank trying to get
him to move to do anything to try to get
his lungs moving to try to get air in
him and while we waited for the
paramedics to
it took about a half an hour and his
breathing got more labor till it was
practically not happening when the
paramedics came in immediately started
CPR and and it happened that fast it was
not him labored breathing it was nothing
within two hours they had pronounced him
gone essentially what you're telling me
is that you had to listen to your best
friend dying
I mean how impossible was that you just
you just and you were on the phone and
there was nothing you could do I'm so
sorry
you know it was horrible and I am much
better today because I am passionate and
fighting because I know what he wanted
what dr. Frank wanted was for all medics
to have the right equipment and for
people to stay at home to ease the
pressure yet today America the world's
richest economy is scrambling to secure
enough masks while the president refuses
to order a national lockdown