
The UK has today announced 449 more coronavirus deaths - the fewest for a fortnight - taking Britain's total death toll to 16,509.

England declared 429 deaths and a further 20 were confirmed across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And 4,676 more people have tested positive for the virus, taking the total number of patients to 124,743.

The day's death toll is a fall on the 596 fatalities announced yesterday, Sunday, and half as many as the day before that (888). It is the lowest number for a fortnight, since April 6 when 439 victims were confirmed.

Although the statistics are known to drop after a weekend, the sharp fall adds to evidence that the peak of the UK's epidemic has blown over.

At today's daily Government briefing, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said 17,971 people are still in hospital battling the coronavirus. Professor Dame Angela McLean, chief scientific adviser for the Ministry of Defence, said the number of people in hospital has now been falling in London for seven days in a row and that officials 'looked forward' to seeing the same trend play out in other regions across the country.

Mr Sunak said more than 140,000 companies had applied to the Government's furlough scheme for grants to help cover the wages of more a million people, and he announced more money would be made available for early-stage businesses to help them set up during the economic turmoil.

It comes as a leading expert at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.

Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6'6") away from others.

He said ministers 'lost sight' of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been 'consistently wrong' during the crisis.

Professor Heneghan hailed Sweden - which has not enforced a lockdown despite fierce criticism - for 'holding its nerve' and avoiding a 'doomsday scenario'. The country has recorded just 392 new patients and 40 deaths today, approximately 10 per cent of the UK's figures. Britain's diagnoses have not been announced yet.

In separate research, the Oxford professor said he estimates that the true death rate among people who catch the virus is between 0.1 and 0.36 per cent, considerably lower than the 13 per cent currently playing out in the UK.

In other coronavirus news:

Prince Philip issued a statement saying: 'I want to recognise the vital and urgent work being done by so many to tackle the pandemic', thanking medical workers, scientists, key workers and volunteers;

Experts have pointed out that areas with large Muslim populations are 'conspicuously absent' from the list of coronavirus hotspots, despite many being in at-risk inner city boroughs, suggesting their lifestyles may protect them from the virus;

Doctors have hit out at the deputy chief medical officer for England, Dr Jenny Harries, for saying medical staff need to have a 'more adult' conversation about protective equipment, which the NHS is in short supply;

Billionaire Richard Branson has warned his airline, Virgin Atlantic, will go bust without a Government bailout - but he has offered a private island in the Caribbean as collateral against a loan;

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reached out to Cabinet ministers from recovery to urge them not to loosen the UK's lockdown, saying preventing a resurgence of the virus must be their number one priority;

A symptom-tracking app run by King's College London estimates that there are only around 460,000 people with an active symptomatic COVID-19 infection in the UK - down 75% from April 1.

Royal College of GP data shows the number of people with flu-like illness in England and Wales dropped by 50 per cent when hand-washing and social distancing was encouraged on March 16. Professor Heneghan says this is evidence full lockdown was not necessary

NHS England confirmed this afternoon that a total of 14,829 people have now died in its hospitals and tested positive for COVID-19.

The patients whose deaths were announced today were aged between 40 and 101 years old, and 15 of them had no health problems before catching the virus. The youngest of those was 49.

Just 85 of the deaths recorded happened yesterday, on April 19. 210 of the people counted in today's statistics succumbed to the virus on Saturday, April 18.

A total of 19,316 COVID-19 tests were carried out yesterday on 14,106 people - the Government is currently only about 20 per cent of the way towards its target of doing 100,000 tests per day by May 1.

Scientists are now in agreement that the peak of the UK's epidemic seems to have been on April 8, when 803 people died.

SWEDEN RECORDS JUST 40 DEATHS AND FEWER THAN 400 NEW CASES IN A DAY Sweden recorded just 40 new coronavirus deaths and 392 new cases today as the country continues to resist going into lockdown. Like other countries, Sweden has typically seen a fall in reported cases on Sundays and Mondays followed by a surge when the weekend is fully accounted for. The jump of 392 new cases is the smallest since April 12 - a Sunday - and takes Sweden's total infection count from 14,385 to 14,777. The 40 new deaths bring the death toll from 1,540 to 1,580, meaning that 10.7 per cent of confirmed virus patients have died of the disease. Sweden's light touch to the crisis has sparked criticism from some scientists and academics and also caused alarm from some of its European neighbours. Bars, restaurants and schools remain open while public gatherings of up to 50 people are still permissible in Sweden. Sweden has far more deaths than Denmark, Norway and Finland, a difference that is not adequately explained by the size of their populations. Finland has imposed checks on usually free-flowing border traffic at its frontier with Sweden, fearing the spread of the disease. The government insists that its strategy is right because people need to 'understand and accept' measures over the long term rather than be forced into obeying them. 'If everyone takes their responsibility, together we will overcome it,' says Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. Advertisement

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, from the University of Cambridge, said: 'This clearly shows we are in a steadily, but rather slowly, improving position since the peak of deaths 12 days ago on April 8th.

'But, judging from the experience in Italy, this could be a lengthy process.'

Professor Heneghan, who also works as a GP, told MailOnline: 'The peak of deaths occurred on April 8, and if you understand that then you work backwards to find the peak of infections. That would be 21 days before then, right before the point of lockdown.'

He refers to a delay in the time it takes for an infected person to fall seriously ill and die - three weeks on average.

He claims that if the Government accepts that deaths peaked on April 8, then it must mean that infections were at their highest around three weeks prior.

Data shows the rate of Britons with upper respiratory tract infections dropped from 20 per 100,000 people on March 15 to around 12 per 100,000 just six days later.

The figures do not relate solely to coronavirus but may be a good indicator because so few people were being tested for the deadly infection.

Explaining the logic behind his claim, Professor Heneghan said: 'The UK Government keeps saying it is using the best science.

'But it appears to be losing sight of what’s actually going on. We’ve been getting scientific advice that is consistently wrong.

'It has failed to look at all the data and understand when the peak of infections actually occurred.'

He added: 'Fifty per cent reductions in infections occurred on March 16, right when hand washing and social distancing was introduced.

'If you go look at what’s happening in Sweden, they are holding their nerve and they haven’t had doomsday scenario. Our Government has got it completely the wrong way around.'

In Sweden most schools, shops, pubs and restaurants remain open, with the Swedes advised rather than forced to adopt social distancing measures.

There have been 14,777 coronavirus cases in Sweden, giving it a per capita infections rate of 140 per 100,000 people. With a total of 1,580 deaths, the nation has a fatality rate of 15 per 100,000 people.

By comparison, the UK has suffered 120,067 cases and 16,060 deaths, meaning 182 people per 100,000 catch the virus and 24 per 100,000 die from it.

On top of much lower death and infections rates, the virus appears to be wreaking less havoc on its economy compared to the UK.

Less than six per cent of Sweden's workforce had filed claims for unemployment benefits - wheres a quarter of Britons (1.4 million people) have applied for universal credit.

Sweden has managed to keep its daily infection rate at around 60 per million people a day for the last week. In the UK it has been 70 per million and in Spain it has been around 90 per million

Sweden's death rate per million people has crept up to 10 a day, but it is still lower than the UK, Spain and France

Professor Heneghan and his colleague Dr Jason Oke posted graphs of countries with a case-fatality rate of less than four - meaning around 4 per cent of confirmed cases die

The two experts also posted case-fatality ratios of countries that were higher than 4 per cent, suggesting they were testing very few patients - and only the severely ill ones

COVID-19 DEATH RATE COULD BE JUST 0.1% COVID-19's death rate may be as low as 0.1 per cent, according to a new analysis of the pandemic. Statistics show the UK's current case-fatality rate - the number of patients who die after testing positive - is around 13.4 per cent. But scientists warn this is wildly inaccurate because it only takes into account cases that have been confirmed in a laboratory. Health bosses controversially decided early on in the crisis to only swab patients in hospital, missing potentially millions of cases. Two leading Oxford University experts estimate the true death rate is up to 134 times lower than that - between 0.1 and 0.36 per cent. But the death ratio would be higher for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions because they have weaker immune systems, the pair said. Professor Carl Heneghan and Dr Jason Oke took into account the trends in outbreaks across the world - but warned the exact figure was likely to still change. They analysed data from Iceland which suggested a CFR of around 0.2 per cent, as well as deeper studies from China that showed it was also below 1 per cent. Professor Heneghan and Dr Oke said Iceland - home to just 364,000 people - can obtain a more accurate estimate of CFR and IFR during the pandemic. The IFR relates to all cases - not just ones that are confirmed. This is because of their higher rates of testing - Iceland carries out more tests per capita than anywhere in the world - as well as their smaller population. They calculated the best guess for case fatality ratio was 0.72 per cent but said halving this figure to make the IFR would be an over-estimate. And they added: 'In swine flu, the IFR ended up as 0.02 per cent, five-fold less than the lowest estimate during the outbreak. 'In Iceland, where the most testing per capita has occurred, the IFR lies somewhere between 0.01 per cent and 0.19 per cent.' Using the mathematical equation (0.1-0.36 per cent) for Britain, it would suggest the number of cases in the UK could be between 4.5-16million. Official figures show only 120,000 Britons have tested positive for COVID-19, which began spreading on UK soil in February. Several scientists have resorted to guessing the size of the UK's outbreak, including another Oxford team who said up to half of Britain may have been struck down. Other German researchers estimated the number was between 1-2million and that fewer than 2 per cent of cases were being diagnosed. Profesosr Heneghan and Dr Oke said antibody testing would help to paint a clearer picture by allowing officials to work out how many have been infected. Advertisement

Professor Heneghan criticised the British Government for banking on lockdown as its sole strategy and warned the damage on the economy will now be worse than the disease itself.

He said: 'Look at our partners [in the EU]. They're opening up again. We should be reopening society. We need to get a plan in place rapidly, we cant wait three weeks then slowly open up.

'As well as major economic issues, austerity will impact people's physical and mental health.

'The second issue of lockdown is that it's making the public scared to engage with healthcare.

'People are avoiding going to GPs and hospitals because they believe there is so much infection there that they might catch it [coronavirus]. That’s really damaging.'

Figures show that more than 80 extra deaths are occurring every day in London alone before paramedics reach the victims because patients are reluctant to phone for an ambulance in case they catch the virus in hospital.

Professor Heneghan said the decision to abandon mass-testing and contact tracing had 'completely failed' elderly people.

'The shielding has failed,' he said. 'Seventy per cent of all the deaths are in the over-75s. Forty per cent of all the nursing homes have the infection.

'So whatever we have done it has completely failed in terms of shielding. Why did the scientific advisers say to abandon mass testing and contact tracing?

'We can see it worked for other countries like Germany and South Korea, so why?

'If it was about resources – look at what Germany did. It devolved responsibility, getting universities and healthcare sites to carry out tests.

'We centralised it. But that was always going to be impossible for 66million people in the UK. We have failed the elderly – care home and healthcare workers needed to be tested and isolated.'

South Korea was able to become one of the few countries to flatten the outbreak's curve through stringent contact tracing and mass testing.

By mid-February, the nation had its first coronavirus test validated and approved for mass-use. South Korea then launched a meticulous contact tracing regime.

It mapped out the travel of each confirmed case, down to details like their seat number on buses, planes and trains.

This information was posted online so people could check if they came into contact with an infected person and therefore had to be isolated and tested.

In the early stages, Britain was also hunting down close contacts of infected people and getting them to self-isolate.

But as cases started to explode, it abandoned the strategy.

Professor Heneghan said UK officials still don't have a grip on how many people actually have the infection, which makes it impossible to lift the restrictions any time soon.

He said testing small samples of the population and applying the results to the rest of society was a 'really easy' way out of the nationwide quarantine.

'The key is nobody has really understood how many people actually have the infection,' he added.

'You could do that really quickly - random sampling of 1,000 people in London who thought they had the symptoms.

'You could do that in the next couple of days and get a really key handle on that problem and we would then be able to understand coming out of lockdown much quicker.

Swedes can still go shopping, eat out at restaurants, get haircuts, and send children younger than 16 to class. Pictured: People were out in public as normal yesterday in Stockholm

Sweden could have herd immunity by next month, claims diseases chief Parts of Sweden could achieve 'herd immunity' as early as next month, the country's leading epidemiologist has said as the death toll steadily rises. The Government is holding out against a total lockdown despite growing calls for 'rapid and radical measures' to contain the coronavirus outbreak. It has cancelled football games and closed university buildings. Restaurants, cinemas, gyms, pubs, and shops remain open. Last week, it announced plans for an aggressive testing regime which could see 100,000 tests administered as the number of cases exceeded 13,000. Speaking to local media, Dr Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden's controversial strategy, claimed that the population of Stockholm - the epicentre of the country's outbreak - could achieve 'herd immunity' as early as next month. Dr Tegnell said: 'According to our modellers [at the Public Health Agency of Sweden], we are starting to see so many immune people in the population in Stockholm that it is starting to have an effect on the spread of the infection. 'Our models point to some time in May.' He told Norwegian TV: 'These are mathematical models, they're only as good as the data we put into them. We will see if they are right.' Advertisement

'In fact the damaging effects now of lockdown are going to outweigh the damaging effects of coronavirus.'

Britain’s coronavirus testing programme appears to be in crisis – as health bosses now have just 10 days to increase the number of daily swabs fivefold.

Ministers yesterday insisted they will hit their target of testing 100,000 people a day by the end of April.

But just 21,626 tests were performed on Saturday – this was the highest figure to date but leaves a shortfall of almost 80,000 to make up in a matter of days.

Last night experts reiterated the ‘critical’ importance of testing for a route out of the virus crisis – but raised grave doubts over the accuracy of the tests, warning there are ‘false negative’ results in as many as 15 per cent of cases.

Failures in the execution of the tests, the timing and the process in laboratories is leading to results wrongly stating an infected patient is clear of the virus.

Nurses in some areas have been told to expect false negatives in 30 per cent of cases – and to assume the patient has it if they have symptoms.

Last night Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove insisted the Government is ‘on course’ to reach Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s 100,000 a day target by the end of the month.

He said laboratory capacity has been ramped up to cater for 38,000 tests a day. But with little more than half this number actually being tested, Mr Gove said it is crucial that capacity is used to its full extent.

But it came as last night the Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Jenny Harries appeared to deny greater testing would save lives.

While acknowledging it is important to investigate the link between more tests and reduced death rate, she said: ‘I think the actual mechanism between the two is still not clear.'

Former World Health Organization official, Professor Anthony Costello, wrote on Twitter that Dr Harries should resign if that was her belief.

Infectious diseases expert Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said the Government had been too slow to increase its testing programme.

‘If you look at what has happened in Korea and Singapore and indeed in Germany, there was a much quicker ramping up of testing,’ he added. ‘Testing will be critical as we come out of this epidemic.’

This diagram shows how different countries are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Some European countries are already starting to ease their lockdowns, while others including Spain and France will remain firmly under quarantine into next month

TESTING AND CONTACT TRACING 'THE BEST WAY OUT OF LOCKDOWN' Testing and tracking patients' social networks is the 'most promising' short-term approach to lifting the COVID-19 lockdown, according to a major report. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study said isolating people with coronavirus and tracing their contacts so they also isolate - an approach abandoned by the UK Government early on - is the key to controlling further outbreaks of coronavirus. It comes as former health secretary Jeremy Hunt took to social media on Monday to say contact tracing 'needs to be our next national mission'. The OECD report said Covid-19 infections would 'rebound rapidly' if countries just moved to lift their lockdowns completely, and urged them to ramp up contact tracing. It said: 'Once the number of infected people has successfully been brought sufficiently down, quick suppression of new waves of viral infections will be key. Testing strategies are central to achieve this.' The study argued that 'strong and effective testing, tracking and tracing (TTT) is needed' and 'is the most promising approach in the short run to bringing - and keeping - the epidemic under control without resorting to widespread lockdowns of social and economic life'. It added: 'The TTT approach may be used to block the initial or recurrent spreads of a pathogen, aiming for a rapid extinction of local, well-defined outbreaks that collectively can control an epidemic.' The Government has come under intense scrutiny over its testing and contact tracing policy after Public Health England (PHE) advised ministers in early March that contact tracing should be stopped. PHE told the PA news agency in mid-March that 'because the virus is more widespread and we will not necessarily be able to determine where someone has contracted the virus', contact tracing was being stopped in favour of a more 'targeted' approach. Source: Press Association Advertisement

Doctors last night said the false negative results could have ‘serious consequences’. Dr Andrew Preston, at the University of Bath, warned of the dangers for care home workers and NHS staff who wrongly believe they are safe to return to work.

Coronavirus tests take swabs from the throat or nose before being sent to labs.

But experts point out they often only work if the virus is present high up in a patient’s throat or mouth, and often in the early stages, it will still be deep in the lungs.

A senior nurse at a hospital in the South of England said they believed they were still receiving false negatives in as many as 30 per cent of cases in their area.

The nurse, who did not want to be identified, said: ‘It’s totally hit and miss whether an infected patient will have anything which can be detected in their throats.’

In the absence of widespread testing, much of the data coming out about the true scale of the outbreak in the UK is statistical guesswork. One of the most consistent trackers has been the COVID Symptom Tracker app developed by King's College London.

Latest analysis from the King's College COVID Symptom Tracker app estimates that there are now around 462,700 people with symptoms of the killer infection.

It's a drop of more than three quarters since the 1.9million on April 1 and a staggering 93 per cent since March 23 - when app began to track Britain's outbreak.

Developed with the health data company, ZOE, the COVID Symptom Tracker is helping predict the scale of the coronavirus outbreak in the UK.

The public are encouraged to download the app and fill out forms which describe their health and ask about possible coronavirus symptoms.

Healthy people, those who think they might have COVID-19, and those who have been officially diagnosed are all able to take part.

The first set of data was released on March 26. It suggested around one in 10 people were ill with, or had already had, COVID-19.

When applied to the whole of the UK population, it meant an estimated 6.6million people had the virus in the third week of March.

According to researchers at King's College London, the number of people self-reporting coronavirus symptoms suggests that the number who are currently ill with the disease has plummeted by 75 per cent since the beginning of April, going from 1.9million to 462,700

BORIS JOHNSON 'CLINGING TO LOCKDOWN IN FEAR OF A SECOND WAVE' The prospects of an early end to the crippling coronavirus lockdown receded today as Boris Johnson is understood to be prioritising staving off a second wave of infections. The Prime Minister has told colleagues his 'overriding concern' is to avoid a second peak in the pandemic that would plunge the country back into turmoil. Mr Johnson is still recuperating from the disease at Chequers, but conveyed his views during a two-hour meeting on Friday with foreign secretary Dominic Raab, senior adviser Dominic Cummings, communications director Lee Cain, and cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill. In a round of interviews this morning, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said: 'The PM is very concerned about a second peak if we lift the restrictions too soon.' Government sources have also been frantically playing down the idea circulated by senior Tories over the weekend that schools could be reopened by mid-May, suggesting early June is more likely. The timetable emerged amid signs of Cabinet splits over how quickly to ease the draconian curbs, with fears the economic damage will kill more people than the virus itself. Advertisement

Following that, the team have used data from people who have logged in for seven days in a row to extrapolate to the overall UK population.

Since March 23 people have been confined to their homes under lockdown, and the symptom tracker has shown cases falling as a result.

On April 1 there were 1.9million cases in the UK, mathematical modelling shows, and 1.4million on April 8.

Between April 8 and April 16 cases fell dramatically to 582,640 and even further still to a record low of 462,700 today.

The figures would not detect people who carry the virus but do not show symptoms - it can take up to a week for the tell-tale cough and fever to appear.

Separate research by Professor Carl Heneghan, who said the UK's outbreak peak was a month ago, has suggested that COVID-19's death rate may be as low as 0.1 per cent.

Statistics show the UK's current case-fatality rate - the number of patients who die after testing positive - is around 13.4 per cent.

But scientists warn this is wildly inaccurate because it only takes into account cases that have been confirmed in a laboratory.

Health bosses controversially decided early on in the crisis to only swab patients in hospital, missing potentially millions of cases.

Two leading Oxford University experts estimate the true death rate is up to 134 times lower than that - between 0.1 and 0.36 per cent.

But the death ratio would be higher for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, the pair said.

INNER CITY MUSLIM AREAS 'CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT' FROM COVID-19 HOTSPOTS Areas with large ethnic minority populations make up more than three quarters of England's coronavirus hotspots, a report has revealed. But numbers coming from Muslim communities in areas which could be expected to be hard-hit are low, and cultural habits may be protecting England's Muslims from the fast-spreading disease. That's according to a report by Professor Richard Webber, from Newcastle University, and writer and former Labour Party politician, Trevor Phillips. The report points out that while areas with high proportions of non-white people make up most of the UK's coronavirus hotspots, Asian Muslim areas, largely, do not. Blackburn, Bradford, Luton, Rochdale and Rotherham, Mr Philips said, are 'conspicuous by their absence' on the list of worst-hit places by the coronavirus as both non-white and poor areas. He suggests that regular hand-washing before prayer, a young average age and fewer than one in three Muslim women being in work may offer the population ongoing protection from COVID-19. The report comes as Public Health England launches an inquiry into why non-white people appear to be worse affected by the disease - intensive care reports show that 34.5 per cent of critically ill patients come from ethnic minority groups, despite only making up around 14 per cent of the population. Scientists say black and Asian people may be at greater risk of catching the disease because they're more likely to live in densely-populated cities and work in people-facing jobs such as public transport or the NHS. In an opinion article in The Times today, Mr Phillips wrote: 'Were poverty the key determinant, we would expect the virus to be running rampant among Britain’s Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim communities.' Statistics show that only four of the areas with the highest Muslim populations also appear on the list of COVID-19 hotspots. These are Newham, Birmingham, Brent and Ealing. More than a dozen others with large numbers of Muslim citizens and also in inner city or urban areas, putting them at risk of the virus spreading rapidly, do not appear on the list. These include various boroughs of London and Manchester, Luton, Bradford, Slough and Leicester. Mr Phillips added: 'Maybe there is a revelation to be had here; if one key to stopping transmission of the virus is hand washing, might a faith community many of whose members ritually wash before five-times-a-day prayers have something to teach the rest of us? 'And does an ethnic group where almost 40 per cent are economically inactive - and therefore not regularly using public transport, for example - merely underline the protective value of social isolation?' Advertisement

Professor Carl Heneghan and Dr Jason Oke took into account the trends in outbreaks across the world - but warned the figure could still change.

Using this mathematical equation, it would suggest the number of cases in the UK could be between 4.5-16million.

Official figures show only 120,000 Britons have tested positive for COVID-19, which began spreading on UK soil in February.

Several scientists have resorted to guessing the size of the UK's outbreak, including another Oxford team who said up to half of Britain may have been struck down.

Other German researchers estimated the number was between 1-2million and that fewer than 2 per cent of cases were being diagnosed.

Profesosr Heneghan and Dr Oke said antibody testing would help to paint a clearer picture by allowing officials to work out how many have been infected. This is believed to be key to lifting the lockdown in the UK, something which is on a mysterious timescale after the Government last week added at least another three weeks.

Boris Johnson today moved to snuff out Cabinet pressure for an early easing of lockdown, making clear that a second peak in the coronavirus outbreak is the biggest threat to the country.

The PM intervened from his recuperation at Chequers, in Buckinghamshire, to warn there must not be any let-up in the draconian curbs until scientists are sure the disease will not flare up again.

Mr Johnson has told First Secretary Dominic Raab and senior aides that 'moving too quickly' would be the worst outcome for both the economy and public health.

The premier's stance emerged amid signs of Cabinet splits over how quickly to ease the restrictions, with fears the crippling impact of lockdown on business and jobs will kill more people than the virus itself.

Hawks in government have been pointing out the NHS now has some spare capacity to treat patients, and suggesting that it should be allowed to 'run hot' to revive the economy. Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove are thought to be among those pushing for an earlier release.

Government sources have also been frantically playing down a 'traffic light' exit strategy circulated by senior Tories over the weekend, which could see schools partly reopened by mid-May. Early June is said to be more likely.

The PM's official spokesman fuelled speculation that Mr Johnson will be back sooner rather than later today, briefing political journalists that he is getting 'daily updates' at Chequers - although stressing that he is not yet doing any 'official work'.

Asked for Mr Johnson's stance on the timing of lockdown, the spokesman said: 'The big concern is a second peak. That is what ultimately will do the most damage to health and the most damage to the economy. If you move too quickly the virus could begin to spread exponentially again.'