Coronavirus news you may have missed overnight: UK in talks of antibody test rollout as government data shows 6.3 million employees have been furloughed

Global number of Covid-19 cases reaches 3.58 million, with 252,000 deaths

The coronavirus continues to affect millions of people around the world as the crisis costs people their livelihoods and lives.

The UK recorded its lowest daily death toll since March, with 288 deaths recorded on Sunday. The total death toll now stands at 28,734, leaving the country third worst-hit by the pandemic, behind the US and Italy.

But health secretary Matt Hancock warned that numbers can be expected to spike sharply again on Tuesday, as reports of deaths have been consistently lower on the weekend due to administrative delays.

Here is your daily briefing of coronavirus news you may have missed overnight.

UK in talks over rollout of antibody test with near-100% accuracy rate

Health secretary Matt Hancock has said the UK is in talks with pharmaceutical giant Roche on a large-scale rollout of a Covid-19 antibody test with a near-100 per cent accuracy rate.

The test could be available in the UK within weeks, as the Swiss-based company announced it is prepared to ramp up production to “double-digit millions per month” over the month of May to be used by healthcare services throughout the world.

Public Health England is independently evaluating the test at its laboratory in Porton Down in Wiltshire. Initial results are expected by the end of this week.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued emergency authorisation for the lab-based test.

Roche’s test has also received approval for use in countries using the European CE mark, including the UK.

Nearly one in four UK workers furloughed in past fortnight

Government data released by HM Revenue and Customs showed that nearly one in four UK employees have been furloughed in the past two weeks.

6.3 million people are now registered under the government’s job retention scheme to support workers and firms. Under the scheme, the Treasury pays up to 80 per cent of the salaries of furloughed workers.

Around 23 per cent of the country’s workforce has been temporarily laid off, according to recent labour market data, which placed the number of private sector workers at 27.5 million.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak told ITV News that he is seeking ways to wind down the scheme and ease people back into work in a “measured way”. The scheme is currently due to run until the end of June.

He said: “To anyone anxious about this, I want to reassure that there will be no cliff-edge to the furlough scheme.

“I’m working as we speak to figure out the most effective way to wind down the scheme and ease people back into work in a measured way.

“As some scenarios have suggested, we are potentially spending as much on the furlough scheme as we do on the NHS, for example.

“Clearly that is not a sustainable situation which is why, as soon as the time is right, we want to get people back to work and the economy fired up again.”

Businesses collapsing every day due to delays processing grants

A cabinet minister has suggested that businesses are going “to the wall” every day due to councils being too slow in processing coronavirus-related grants.

Robert Jenrick, the Local Government Secretary, warned that the government may have to “take action against those councils that are less successful” in processing the grants in a timely manner.

Local authorities have received billions of pounds from the government to be distributed to companies affected by the crisis.

Some, such as Cornwall, have already distributed more than 90 per cent of the cash they were given on to businesses, Mr Jenrick told MPs at the Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government committee.

But he added: “I would urge councils who have not yet managed to reach those sorts of levels to now focus on this and ensure those grants get out, because every day that those grants are delayed there will be businesses that go to the wall as a result of that.”

Turkey allows youth and elderly to leave homes at different times as lockdown eases

Turkey announced on Monday it will ease lockdown measures imposed to control the spread of coronavirus next week amid signs of success in its efforts.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in a televised speech that youth and the elderly will be allowed to leave their homes for short walks in staggered four-hour slots. Shopping malls, clothing stores and hairdressers will be allowed to re-open.

The country is also lifting domestic travel restrictions on seven provinces that are tourism destinations.

The sale of face masks was previously banned to prevent price-gouging, but Mr Erdogan announced authorities would now allow them.

However, the lockdown in major cities will continue, including in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

The government could reimpose strict rules if social distancing and hygiene guidelines were not maintained, warned Mr Erdogan.

“We are at an important point in the fight against the epidemic,” he said. “Our number of patients is constantly decreasing, and the number of patients that are recovering increases exponentially. We will return to normal, but this will be a new normal. Nothing will return to the order we knew before in our country as well as the whole world.”

Asylum seekers surviving on ‘scandalously low’ financial support during pandemic

Four asylum seekers have jointly threatened the Home Office with a legal challenge over support rates during the lockdown, as home secretary Priti Patel claimed she had seen no evidence that asylum seekers were struggling to meet their basic demands with the current rates.

Duncan Lewis Solicitors, representing the group, issued a pre-action letter to the department arguing that it must fill the “support gap” opened up by current conditions and failure to increase support constitutes a breach of human rights law.

Around 44,000 asylum seekers are currently living on just over £5 a day (£37 a week). One claimant in the legal challenge told The Independent she and her husband have been skipping meals so their young daughters could eat.

The family is usually able to get vouchers worth £44 every two months from a drop-in at West London Synagogue, but the synagogue has since closed due to the lockdown.

Toufique Hossain, director of public law at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, said the evidence was “overwhelming” that vulnerable asylum seekers were living in “desperate” circumstances.

“Priti Patel can no longer hide behind her ignorance,” he said. “This existential shortfall was pointed out to her during the recent select committee hearings and her answer betrayed that once more she was not across her brief.

“Now that the home secretary has seen the evidence from refugee charities and the information contained i our pre-action correspondence shining a bright light on the desperate measures being adopted by asylum seekers to survive in this period, we hope she will change course, urgently.”

US coronavirus deaths projection now predicts over 134,000 fatalities

A new model frequently used by the White House has projected that more than twice as many people in the US may die of Covid-19 than was previously predicted.

Health officiated revised projections amid fears recently relaxed quarantine measures and expired stay-at-home orders could worsen the epidemic.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projects 134,475 US deaths with a range of 95,092 to 242,890, up to early August.

In a report released on 4 May, a similar projection from federal officials showed a daily death toll increase from coronavirus to as many as 3,000 per day by 1 June.

The White House claimed the report has not yet been vetted by the coronavirus task force and is “not reflective of any modelling done by the task force or data that the task force has analysed”.

IHME attributed the new figures to the “rising mobility in most US states as well as easing of social distancing measures” within the next few weeks.

“Growing contacts among people will promote transmission of the coronavirus,” said the university. “Increases in testing and contact tracing, along with warming seasonal temperatures - factors that could help slow transmission - do not offset rising mobility, thereby fuelling a significant increase in projected deaths.”