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tv   The Papers  BBC News  May 20, 2020 10:30pm-10:46pm BST

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one of the persistent questions surrounding coronavirus is why it seems to affect some people and not others. the story of dr mike hare, a fit and healthy gp with no underlying health conditions, is a startling illustration of what can happen. he spent nearly two months in intensive care after he fell ill with covid—19, and his family feared the worst, as catherine burns reports. mike hare is a gp, butjokes that his nickname should be mr fit. he's run a marathon, skis and loves to sail. but in march he got coronavirus. he soon became very ill and spent seven weeks in intensive care. he barely remembers anything, but for his family it was all too real. we actually received a facetime off him on tuesday morning, just before he was put on a ventilator. with him saying this is what's happening, this might be the last time that, you know, we speak.
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which was absolutely heartbreaking, really. because we thought that was it. so, it was pretty horrible. i think it must have been very hard for you. when people usually go on to a ventilator, they go on for a few days, just to give them a bit of rest. but that then turned into a week, and then it turns into three weeks, it turned into five weeks. we weren't able to see him. we asked if we could come in and hold his hand, none of that was possible. when he was less heavily sedated, nurses helped the family video call him. it was the first time imogen had seen her dad for weeks. you don't know this, but later on, around week four or five, he was going, where are you, why aren't you here? and for him, you became ill the week before lockdown even started. so he had no acknowledgement or realisation of what the whole country was going through. do you have any memories of that at all? no. you know, i had the "you've been
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asleep for six weeks" whisper in my ears. and then i woke up and i was in a bed. i think the patient has the lucky run, to be honest with you. and my thoughts would go to anybody who is on a ventilator at the moment. but particularly their relatives. tell me about the care you got. they were fantastic. it's a testament to the hard work of colchester hospital. the attention, the sense of love, and they would do anything for me. how has this changed you, physically? i won't be doing any more marathons. as i sit here now, i'm a bit breathless. i've been out for a week, and it's bloody hard work to get moving. and it hurts at night time. there is a plus side to this. i've had more time with my family. i think we've got closer. we've reflected, to see what life would have been like without me being around. what was that first hug like? oh, you give yourself goals.
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and my goal was to get home. just to get home. you're here. yeah, yeah. but recovery from a trauma like this isn't straightforward. and since we filmed this, mike has had to go back into hospital. he's optimistic that he'll be home with his family soon, though. catherine burns, bbc news. most of the united kingdom has been basking in glorious sunshine today, with some parts enjoying temperatures as high as 28 degrees celsius. despite some easing of the lockdown measures, social distancing measures are still in place. so how have people been staying safe? our correspondent, sarah campbell, has been finding out. it's not easy to find an isolated spot on the beach when so many other
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people have the same idea. for businesses, too, there is a balance between wanting customers and keeping them safe. it's too busy. this doesn't feel like brighton today, it feels like a horrible day in brighton with all the daytrippers. i do feel safe because it's quite a big beach, so it feels possible to stay two metres away. i think everybody has just got to abide by the rules, it's not hard. it's just one of those things, everybody has to get on with it. the hot weather has certainly brought people to the beach in brighton. the challenge, here, as elsewhere, is how best to remind them to keep their distance. in the peak district, walkers were out in force, along with their dogs. not far away in glossop, there was time for a round of golf, and city dwellers have enjoyed their local green spaces.
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in lancashire, fishing, suited to social distancing. in england, rules regarding travel and exercise have been loosened, but it remains the case in scotland that you have to stay in your local area. the same is true in wales, and in both you can't meet up with members of different households. in northern ireland you can drive somewhere to exercise, but it can't be too far from home. not so in devon, where the police issued pleas to motorists to stay away, citing gridlocked roads and ca i’s away, citing gridlocked roads and cars parked on verges and double yellow lines. they said many of the vehicles were identified as coming from all over the country. as the summer heats up, so will the pressure on the tourist hotspots. that's it. now on bbc one, time for the news where you are. have a very good night.
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hello to viewers in the uk joining those around the world. it's now time for us to take a first look at the national and international front pages in the papers. hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the the papers will be bringing us tomorrow. with me are the former conservative pensions minister ros altmann — and the journalist and author mihir bose. let's get started with a quick look at what those from pages have in store for us.
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the daily mirror shows a packed southend in essex earlier today — saying pressure is mounting on the uk government to launch it's track and trace system to avoid a second wave of coronavirus. the daily telegraph's front page also shows a busy beach — this time bournemouth — and looks at how the government plans to use this system to get some pupils in england back to school by the first ofjune. southend once again — this time on the daily mail. which says any restrictions of the lockdown in england will only be lifted once the government's tracing system is in place — according to it's scientific advisers. shamed by this hospital cleaner — the metro's front page focusses on the government's u turn to allow bereaved families of all nhs front line support staff and social care workers who have died with covid—i9 to remain in the uk — which was sparked by a tweet from syrian refugee hassan akkad. meanwhile, the times looks at hospital admissions for people with covid—i9 in the uk,
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which have dropped below 10,000 since the start of the lockdown. the express writes of the uk health secretary matt hancock's pledge to tackle obesity after it emerged a third of coronavirus deaths are linked with type two diabetes. meanwhile the i looks to our summer holidays saying britons could be allowed staycations if there is no second spike this summer. so let's begin... ros altmann mihir bose, welcome, and thank you both of you for taking the time tojoin us thank you both of you for taking the time to join us virtually to have a look at the papers. let's start with the daily telegraph's front page. the pm promises tracing byjune to help close open schools. this is the contact and trace system that people have been talking about. schools obviously, ros, have been quite contentious issue between teachers unions, headmasters, had mistresses, medics and, of course, the government. yeah, and there is in
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the warmest fear and confusion about whether or not it is safe to go back to school, to have kids back in school. i think what we're being told the medical advisers is that if you have got the track and tracing come suggestion is that the spread among children and from children to adults is not that significant. not nearly as much as adult to adult. and children are most... much less affected by the virus itself, so i think the sooner we can get children back to school, the better it will be for those children, because so many have been unable to continue their education. not all children are able to have home—schooling and they don't even have online access at home, all of them, so there is an urgent need to get children back to
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school, but there's also the need to protect the teachers who are teaching them, and to make sure that they are tracing and tracking and testing in place so that if the return to school does have some impact, we can make sure that the impact, we can make sure that the impact isn't that great, because, obviously, there will be an increase in the spread of the virus when people start integrating much more, but you can't just people start integrating much more, but you can'tjust cut everybody off from the whole world forever. there has to come a point where we say we have got this managed, we have got the capacity in the nhs, and we need to start slowly easing the lockdown. yet, mihir, so many parents have expressed their worries about sending their kids back to school on june the ist, and, you know, some mightargue, june the ist, and, you know, some might argue, "look, june the ist, and, you know, some mightargue, "look, we june the ist, and, you know, some might argue, "look, we still have a large number of deaths occurring every day, three entered 63 today
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was announced." how difficult do you think it's going to be to persuade people to put aside those fears and to send their kids to school even if they do reopen. that is the problem, ros says we need to reopen the schools come up course we need to reopen the schools, but the problem is that the government has often made promises on this scale throughout this crisis and they haven't quite managed to fulfil them. remember, they are promising i'iow them. remember, they are promising now by the 1st ofjune, there will be 24,000 trained people who can track every day 10,000 people who are infected. well, that is a big promise to make. there are reasons, economic reasons is welcome of that 10 million private—sector people who are taking help from the aid the government has provided. yes, the schools have to reopen, and given this background, although children are not badly infected by this disease. we have had even today on television mums coming on and saying
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"i've got asthma and if something happens to my child and he or she passes it on to me, i want to cope." so there is reassurance needed, because the people are frightened, and let's face it, a divider is coming up in the country. 20 largely labour councils are setting their owi'i labour councils are setting their own timetable apart from what the unions are saying, apart from what teachers are saying about how they can cope with this. so it's a very very complex story. the story here is what might happen, the certain freedom day that might come. but i'm afraid that before we unfurl the flag of freedom, we need a bit more action from the government to prove it can do it. go ahead ros, go ahead. i think we have to recognise that, you know, lots of people have been working throughout this pandemic, and schools have been open, it'sjust pandemic, and schools have been open, it's just that not all children were able to go to school because it depended on what your pa rents a re because it depended on what your parents are doing and whether you had a particular special need. so,
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the idea that we have shut schools com pletely the idea that we have shut schools completely isn't quite right. i think what we need to do as mihir saysis think what we need to do as mihir says is reassure people that, actually, it is safe to go back. nobody should be forced to go back, but there are lots of parents who desperately want their children to go back to school, and indeed children who want to get back to school. ros, you touched on the track and trace system earlier, was talk about the daily mail's from page, boris's planned to relax lockdown and tendayi. how realistic is that, do you think, to get this track entry system up and running properly in the way that it needs to in that timeframe? well, it is really frustrating that we have encompass tracking and tracing and process yet. it does seem to be taking a long time. but the government seems to be confident that it will have this in—place, and, you know, we are more than two months down the line here, so there has been a huge amount of work done
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i'm trying to get this up and running, and other countries have managed to do it. soy certainly hope that we will be in a position to make sure that we know what's happening with this virus. we're learning as we go along all the time. we're learning from what's happening here. we are learning from other countries. and if we have got people in place to do the tracing, and of course lots of people are either furloughed or sadly have lost their jobs, either furloughed or sadly have lost theirjobs, so there are people available to do this work. i hope that we will be able to really get back to some kind of free air life than we have had so far. if we go back to the front page of the daily mail, mihir, you see a picture of plenty of people packing south end on c, and this with advice from whitehall on this front page saying any decision on lockdown is conditional on advice that we can move forward without risking a
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second spike. we are not there yet. is there risk of second spike committee think if lockdown is used in this way and people go up to beaches and packed them out like this? well, there is certainly a risk. we saw this not only in south end, but in places like brighton, it was a lovely sunny day. the hottest day we have had, and people have been cooped in. and you can understand, people have been very goodin understand, people have been very good in following the two metre rule in staying at home to save lives and protect the nhs, but to come back to what ros was saying about track and trace, the problem with track and trace, the problem with track and trace is that we changed policy in march. we should've gone down the track and trace route vendor. we are trying to catch up, but we have got to demonstrate that we can catch up, because other countries have shown him and the who kept saying, test, test, test, that's the only way to get it done, but what the feeling is, since the figure coming out show that there been no cases in london
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today, that the overall number of cases

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