this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a former top us vaccine official turned whistleblower tells congress lives have been lost unnecessarily, and the outbreak will get only worse without a plan. if we failed to improve our response now, based on science, ifear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged. in england, accident and emergency visits have fallen by more than half since the outbreak started, to the lowest level since records began plus, world leaders past and present call for universal access to any potential covid—19 vaccine.

hello and welcome to audiences in the uk and around the world. we're covering all the latest coronavirus developments here in britain and globally. we begin tonight with the damning warning from a whistle—blower and leading virus expert, that the united states faces its darkest winter in modern history, if the country fails to improve its response to the coronavirus pandemic. dr rick bright told a congressional committee that a resurgence of the virus — combined with seasonal flu — could cause unprecedented illness and deaths. the bbc‘s nada tawfik reports. the bitter divide was at the

forefront of lawmakers mines in washington as richard bright, the administration former top vaccine researcher turned whistle—blower arrived at the white house hearing to testify. mask on and gloves off, he calmly disinfected his space but refused to sanitise the criticism of his superiors. is that the administration did not take critical steps at the start of the crisis, ignored warnings and even now, lack a centralised and coordinated plan to respond. without planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history. first and foremost, we need to be truthful with the american people. americans deserve the truth. the trip must be based on science. we have the worlds greatest scientists, let us lead, let us speak without fear of retribution. president trump is bragged about his performance. on his way to mix

personal protective equipment, he hit back against doctor bright. he looks like an angry, disgruntled employee who according to some people, did not do a very good job. in his tourof people, did not do a very good job. in his tour of the facility which distributes masks, he chose not to wear one himself while he is eager to highlight the efforts to combat the virus, his reelection strategy includes a quick reopening. the president of the united states, donald trump. he may not be able to hold back rallies, but the voter turnout in the state of pennsylvania to impede his victory of 2016. thank you, that social distancing, look at you, that social distancing, look at you people all spread out and so sweet. that is pretty impressive. but we like it the old way better, don't we? in wisconsin, also a swing state, no social distancing in place at this bar. this would happen when word got out that the state supreme

court overturned the stay—at—home order. when the coronavirus first hit, the message was for communities to come together by staying apart. in months on, the country is more divided than ever with its battle against the virus. here in the uk —— there's concerns that tens of thousands of seriously ill people in england are not seeking help because of fears that they might catch the coronavirus in hospital — or be a burden on the national health service. the starkest illustration of this is the drop in visits to accident and emergency departments — which are down by more than half since the outbreak began. here's our health editor hugh pym. plenty of staff and not many patients. it's got a little busier here in a&e in recent days, but not much. like many other hospitals, they saw an astonishing drop in the number of patients coming through the doors last month. april here was busy from a covid—i9 perspective, dealing with sick patients.

it was all very calm, controlled and safe but we were busy from that perspective, but we saw a real drop—off in demand of other types of patients that we usually see. normally, assessment cubicles in a&e would be pretty busy but, right now, all these ones along here are empty. they are for non—covid patients. it is a sign of how different things are right now. the worry is that people who might need urgent care are staying away because they are scared of catching the virus. the message from all hospitals, we are open for business and patients who need treatment should come in. if you are concerned about having a stroke, a heart attack, perhaps cancer, do come forward and, at the same time, the nhs will be redesigning the way in which services are offered to keep them safe. the latest figures for england show that a&e visits fell by nearly 57% in the year to april. the monthly total was below 917,000, the lowest since records began. there are no comparable figures yet from other parts of the uk.

the number coming in for routine operations fell by nearly a third in the year to march. all non—emergency surgery was postponed because the nhs needed to clear beds for coronavirus patients, but that has left others, like helen, frustrated. she was told she needed a hysterectomy urgently in february. it didn't happen and she hasn't heard any more. if something is deemed urgent, it's deemed urgent for a reason. i think there are an awful lot of people who have various conditions that are being put at great risk of further damage due to these precautions being taken. jane has been waiting since february for a gall bladder operation, and, again, hasn't been told when it could happen. i understand that in this current situation that, you know, i'm not a priority. i understand that fully. it does concern me.

i'd like to get it over and done with, really, you know, so that i feel it won't build up again and there won't be any further problems. nhs leaders have now told hospitals to restart non—urgent operations and procedures, but all patients who are asked to come in will be instructed to self—isolate for 1h days beforehand — a reminder of the continuing concern about the possible spread of the virus. 140 world leaders, past and present, have signed a letter calling for universal access to any potential covid—19 vaccine. it comes as france says the world's nations will have equal access to any vaccine developed by the french drugmaker sanofi, a day after its ceo suggested that americans could get the largest order. meanwhile president trump says he's confident the us will soon have a vaccine. for more, i'm joined now from houston, texas by professor peter hotez, dean of the national school of tropical medicine

at baylor college of medicine. thank you so much for your company. let us start off by asking you, talking about the vaccine being needed globally, how likely is it that everyone is going to have its fairshare of that everyone is going to have its fair share of the vaccine at the same time? that is a great question and it really depends on which vaccine seems to be working the best and safest and it really depends on the type of technology that is used and how easily it can be scaled up to make the necessary and what some people say 4 billion doses for 4 billion adults around and we will see about a paediatric vaccine after that. we are accelerating a protein vaccine that children's college of medicine, a vaccine that has the

hepatitis b vaccine globally, the one that is made in brazil and india and indonesia and elsewhere, our hope is that we are designing to vaccine specifically for global health we are doing this jointly with an organisation that led to the development of the vaccine for african malaria and that is something that needs to be done and if you want global access, you're going to have to focus on some specific vaccines that we already know to be made locally and that is the approach we are taking. there is an article in the british newspaper talking about scientists in oxford and the officer vaccine group saying that there could be a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the summer, i thought these took many more months stop till it is possible that they are manufacturing the vaccine by the time but i do not of the detail of

the manufacturing plants but i doubt very much that you will have enough data in terms of showing that the vaccine actually works and that vaccine actually works and that vaccine is actually safe by then. that takes time and this is something that is typically done through phase three clinical trials that are tested on tens and thousands of individuals so if there isa thousands of individuals so if there is a safety problem, you will know about it and to get a good sense of whether it actually works. i do not see how you can accumulate that kind of safety and efficacy data by the fall or the end of the year and even by next year, forget that information to licence vaccine, that was to be a world record by a fair bit. so i do not anticipate realistically any vaccine being rolled out until next year or possibly towards the end of next year. this is a new virus pathogen and all the stars could align, there's a lot of things that could go wrong at their love things that could go right. it is hard to

predict for certain. but i would say based on experience, we are probably looking at the end of 2021 at the earliest even that would be world record. how realistic do you think the president's desire for equal access globally is, given the situation right now? the world has gotten situation right now? the world has gotte n to situation right now? the world has gotten to be very complicated place, hasn't it? relations among countries and if you look at the players were involved in accelerated vaccine and development, it is the us, it's china, the uk, some the european countries and we are just going to go ahead and develop a global health vaccine for the world and not wait to see what happens. i am hoping at the end of the day that it will be multiple vaccines that can work and at the end of the day, the principle

behind vaccinating against covid—19 is not very complicated. you need an immune response against the spike protein and lots of ways to do it. so i'm very optimistic that we will have and we could have multiple covid—19 vaccines but the hard part is going through that clinical trial and so you can be certain that any vaccine need to release is safe and effective in number two, scale up and number three, whati effective in number two, scale up and number three, what i call the vaccine diplomacy, that is going to be needed between countries and we have done this in the past, look the polio vaccine was developed jointly between the soviets in the united states at the height of the cold war and we did that. and i believe he could do it. bit of history on vaccines. thank you very much for joining us on bbc news. yesterday at this time we first broke the news

that a new blood test, which can detect whether someone has been infected with coronavirus, had been given the go—ahead for use in england. the antibody test has been developed by the swiss drug company roche and it will be available once the uk's national health service has agreed on a price. here's our medical correspondent fergus walsh. it is what millions of britons want to know. have they already had coronavirus? now it is possible to find out for sure, with a blood test. it has to go through lab analysis. this can be done by hand, like here at imperial college london, or in an automated process, like a new highly accurate antibody test, approved for use in the uk. if you get infected with coronavirus, your immune system starts to produce antibodies. these become part of your immune system's memory. so if you get exposed to the virus again, they should attack it. but how much protection they will give and how long that immunity will last is unclear.

for some coronaviruses, we know that protection can fade and we know from experiments many years ago, for example, that it is possible to re—infect individuals with the exact same coronavirus, may be a year later, even though they developed antibodies to start with, so we have to be careful to assume that any antibody will last for a long time. roche says it can provide hundreds of thousands of its antibody test to the uk each week. pharmacies and health clinics could be involved in collecting blood samples. i anticipate that it will be rapidly rolled out in the days and weeks to come, as soon as it is practical to do so. i also anticipate that the focus will be on the national health service and on carers in the first instance. there are several other types of antibody test which only require a finger prick of blood. some of which are being trialled by nhs staff. despite buying 3.5 million of them, the government concluded none was accurate enough.

this is another way of testing for antibodies. you prick your thumb... and then apply a blood spot to this piece of card, which is then sent off to a laboratory for very and then apply a blood spot to this piece of card, which is then sent off to a laboratory for very sophisticated analysis. that dry spot blood test is being developed at imperial college london. it is planning to send out 100,000 home testing antibody kits once they are proven to be accurate and easy—to—use. the swab goes to the back of your throat... remember, it is a swab test like this which will show if you are currently infected with coronavirus. so this remains crucial in preventing the spread of the virus. stay with us on bbc

news, still to come: born to surrogate mothers in ukraine — the babies left stranded in kyiv — whose biological parents from around the world can't fly in to collect them. "the pope was shot. the pope will live." that is the essence of the appalling news from rome this afternoon that as an italian television commentator put it, terrorism had come to the vatican. the man they call the butcher of lyon went on trial today in the french town where he was the gestapo chief in the second world war. winnie mandela never looked like a woman just sentenced to six years injail. the judge told mrs mandela there was no indication she felt even the slightest of remorse. the chinese government has called for and all the effort to help the victims of a powerful earthquake, the worst in the country for 30 years. the computer deep blue has tonight triumphed over the world chess champion garry kasparov. it is the first time a machine at the feet are a reigning world champion in a classical test match. america's first legal same—sex marriages have been taking

place in massachusetts. god bless america! this is bbc news more now on our main story —— dr rick bright, who was sacked as head of the us agency researching a vaccine for covid—19, has been testifying to a congressional committee in washington. i'm joined now by eleanor clift, journalist, author and columnist for the daily beast. explained beast. a little bit more. what did explained a little bit more. what did he do? he is a scientist and he was heading the office with in the health and human services those overseeing the search for a vaccine.

so, he spent a lot of time and vaccine development and he saw before many others did in the donald trump administration that we were going to confront a pandemic and he urged the mass production of masks injanuary and he was dismissed as alarmist and then he rebuffed the presidentskull to stockpile hydrochloric wing, which is an experimental, it's actually a drug that she used for other uses and the president thought it might be useful to treat coronavirus. the testing of it has not proved successful and he pushed back on whether the government should include the controversial trucking at stockpile in the upshot was he was moved out of his position and he then followed a whistle—blower complaint and after filing the complaint, he was invited to testify before the democratic—controlled house and he said in an opening statement that

the government did not react quickly enough and is still performing too slowly to confront the pandemic, that we could be in for the worst, the darkest winter of our lifetime, if we do not act clearly and swiftly and he said, the window is closing. if you very much staked out a position that is opposite to the much more positive talk that we hear coming out of the president and the white house. and hejoins other public health officials warning that the president is pushing the country to reopen too soon and we could be risking a further spike in infections. absolutely in this is another example of the gap, if you like, between the president and public health experts in america and

their beliefs and what they think should happen. allies of the president always kind of draw this false choice that opponents of the presidents strategy does want to locked on the country forever in the economy, we cannot do that because as the president says, the cure would be worse than the problem because of all the devastation caused by the decline in the economy. well, what is needed is more testing and more contact tracing, which the president says that there will be more tests available and they will be very slow and basically does not want to take full command and leaves of the individual states to get their own tests to carry things out. so we have a very patchwork reaction to dealing with the pandemic and we have cases slowing and some of the urban centres that were hardest hit, but the virus seems to be finding

footholds and some of the more rural parts of the country and so there is this fear that if we open up things too soon, the virus doesn't know any boundaries and that we could get outbreaks throughout the country in places where they're really not equipped to deal with them. so it is a very high risk strategy on the pa rt a very high risk strategy on the part of the president to be pushing economic reopening, but it is difficult to fight back against that as well because people, their livelihoods are threatened, people are livelihoods are threatened, people a re really livelihoods are threatened, people are really hurting and frustrated that they cannot send their children to school and president has basically drawn line that schools could open in september and he says they will. thank you very much indeed for talking to us this evening. aid workers in yemen say there has been a dramatic rise in the number of people dying with coronavirus—like symptoms in the southern city of aden. save the children says

there have been at least 380 deaths in the past week. according to the charity, some health professionals lacking personal protective equipment are refusing to go to work. it says several hospitals have closed, and people are dying because they can't get treatment. in ukraine at least 35 newborn babies have been left stranded after coronavirus restrictions prevented them being claimed by their parents. the babies, who were born to surrogates, are being looked after by a team of nannies and nurses in a hotel room in kyiv. ukraine closed it's borders in response to the coronavirus pandemic, making it nearly impossible for their biological parents to come from around the world to claim them. jonah fisher sent this report. in a hotel on the outskirts of ukraine's capital, we found the lost children. so, if you just go and have a look in here. these are the 35 babies born here in ukraine,

their parents all around the world. they're being looked after, you can see the nurses looking after them. but desperately sad. they're on their own, because ukraine closed its borders in response to the coronavirus. it stopped the babies, born to surrogates, being claimed by their biological parents. we've got chinese babies, italian babies, by their biological parents. we've got chinese babies, italian babies, spanish babies, british babies. surrogacy is a big and legal business here in ukraine. it cost about £40,000 for each of these babies to be carried by a ukrainian woman. but the surrogates have now gone and the babies must stay in this hotel room, cared for by nannies like olga. "we feel so sorry for them," she says, "we know that no one can replace their parents."

some have overcome the virus restrictions to reach their babies. this is the emotional moment when a couple from sweden were handed their twins ella and louis by the surrogate mother. they only made to it ukraine after an anonymous donor stepped in and paid for a private jet. to sit here and have them in ourarms andjust like, we made it... yeah. i don't know, it's incredible. it's incredible. their next challenge is to get home. the hotel newborns are less fortunate. they must keep waiting for life and love to really begin. jonah fisher, bbc news, in kiev.

and before we go —— applause has rung out once again across the uk tonight for our carers and keyworkers —— for the 8th week in a row —— take a look. (applause) you can reach me on twitter —

i'm @bbcmaryam hello. well, it's fairly chilly out there at the moment, but nowhere near as cold as the last couple of nights. last night in northern ireland, it was down to minus six degrees celsius, the coldest may night there in nearly a0 years. this morning, most major towns and cities will be generally above zero, but it is cold air that's sitting on top of us at the moment. you can see the pale blue colours there. the really cold air‘s to the north of us, but we're certainly in that chilly air mass. we'll have to wait before the warmer air from the southern climes arrives, and that's not going to happen for a few more days. so, the forecast for friday morning, well, early hours of the morning shows some clear weather, but also patchy cloud. temperatures in norwich close to freezing. that does mean a ground

frost outside of town, but more generally speaking, we're talking around 4—6 degrees. so, a bright start to the day. i wouldn't go as far as saying it's going to be a sunny day on friday, but it is going to be a bright one. there'll be some scattered clouds, and actually in the north of the country at times, it will cloud over and there will be a little bit of fleeting rain. now, temperatures are just starting to rise a little bit now. in fact, we're expecting around 17 degrees in the south of the country and around 13 degrees for our northern towns and cities. and friday and towards the weekend, we'll start to see high pressure building in from the south. this is actually going to help to introduce some slightly warmer air from the southern climes, so day—by—day those temperatures will be creeping up just that little bit. saturday's actually going to be very similar to friday, so sunny spells across the uk and some spots of rain in the very far north of scotland and the northern isles and the northern highlands.

so, temperatures around 17 degrees again in london, but perhaps rising a little bit across the north of england there, 16 for yorkshire, 1a for glasgow and edinburgh. and then saturday night into sunday, we are going to see a change in western scotland and northern ireland. in fact, southwesterly winds will blow in cloud, moisture and a fair bit of rain, so it could be quite wet here second half of the weekend. around 15 degrees expected in the lowlands and in belfast, but to the south of that in london, those milder southwesterlies, temperatures will get up to around 20 degrees. and indeed, you can see those temperatures climbing as we head into next week. in fact, next week, the indication is that temperatures could hit the mid—20s, so again it's going to feel more like june. that's it from me. bye— bye.

this is bbc world news. the headlines:

a former top us vaccine official has warned that america could be facing its darkest winter in decades unless it develops a better plan to fight coronavirus. rick bright told congress that failing to improve the strategy would result in unprecedented illness and death. the first known cases of coronavirus have reached the world's largest refugee camp, cox's bazar in bangladesh. the settlements are home to more than 800,000 rohingyas who fled persecution in myanmar. there's been a big drop in the number of visits to emergency departments in england's hospitals. they're down by more than a half since the coronavirus outbreak began, leading to fears people are not seeking help. 140 world leaders, past and present, have signed a letter calling for universal access to any potential covid—19 vaccine. a french drug company, sanofi, has reversed its decision to give the us priority to any vaccine it developed.