this is bbc news. the headlines: more than 100,000 people have now died from coronavirus in the united states. those are the official figures, the actual number will be much higher. 100,000 is more than the combined total of deaths from the korean, vietnam and iraq conflicts. and europe after lockdown — life for many is gradually returning to normal as countries ease restrictions on movement, which have been in place in some areas for almost three months. we take the temperature of a continent which is relaxing its rules. and the first private sector mission to the international space station and the first crewed launch from us soil in nine years has been postponed due to bad weather. it's now thought that the spacex rocket will be launched on saturday.

the uk health secretary, matt hancock, says the rollout of the test and trace scheme in england later today is an important milestone and declared it was everyone‘s civic duty to cooperate. he said those who've been in contact with people showing symptoms of covid—19 will be told to self—isolate, even if they themselves do not have symptoms. northern ireland has its own version up and running. scotland has announced its own system will also start tomorrow and wales‘ system is due to start in earlyjune, as our health editor hugh pym reports. it's billed as a new phase in the battle to contain the virus, targeting people at risk and the areas where they live so restrictions for others can be progressively eased. it'll be a big ask for some. those who've recently met up with someone who tested positive will be told to self—isolate for two weeks. nhs test and trace means we can start to replace the national

lockdown with individual isolation for those who've been in contact with the virus, and local action, where it's necessary, to respond to a flare—up. a local tracing system's already been tried out in sheffield. volunteers got in touch with individuals who'd recently been in contact with people who had the virus. and it wasn't always easy. all you're saying to people is, isolate. don't go to work, maybe don't earn. they're difficult things to say and you're making people anxious they might get the illness. so, that piece is hard. so, will people self—isolate if they're asked to? i guess there's a risk that some of your civil liberties are being infringed. but, in the immediate instance, you've got to stay safe for the benefit of you and everyone around you. i'd probably initially be a bit scared. but i would be happy to isolate for 14 days. here's how it works.

if you have coronavirus symptoms, you self—isolate and book yourself a test. if it's positive, an official will call and discuss your recent contacts. anyone you've been two metres or less from for more than 15 minutes, or closer than one metre face—to—face, so that could be colleagues in the office or friends you may have seen. the tracers then call these people and tell them to self—isolate for up to 14 days. though, ultimately, it's voluntary. a smartphone app to help the process has been tried out, but is not yet ready to be officially launched. so, will the scheme work? some are cautious about how it might turn out in practice. it is a big undertaking, and the huge challenge is to link up the testing and tracing people with your carers, the local gps and the local public health system. but if we get it right, then it provides us with a fantastic community shield. test results need to come back quickly. but pauline, who was tested

on tuesday last week at a drive—in centre like this, still hasn't heard. eight days later, i have still not received a result. and i'm feeling very anxious. i'm just wondering when i'm going to get the text message to tell me. the scottish government's test and protect strategy will also be launched tomorrow, a scheme in wales is set to start on monday. northern ireland's got under way last week. the aim is always the same. search out those who might be infected, get them to self—isolate and hopefully contain the virus. hugh pym with that report. now on bbc news, philippa thomas hears the stories of people whose lives have been changed by covid—i9. welcome to coronavirus:

your stories, a programme about how covid is affecting the lives of people around the world. i'm philippa thomas. and this week we're hearing stories from the hospital wards. later, a junior hospital doctor who's also a national beauty queen. but i want to start with the stories of two men who've survived near—death experiences. we'll first go to philadelphia in the united states where brett breslow has been undergoing weeks of rehabilitation. this is my last full day at the rehabilitation centre. i'm looking forward to going home and being with my family after, well, about 2.5 months of being separated from them. we'll hear more about your experience, brett, but ijust wanted to explain to our viewers, before covid—i9 hit you, you were probably healthier than the rest of us? um, i guess i was a fairly healthy guy. i had a few extra pounds, but i worked out five or six

days a week. i like to eat healthy, fresh vegetables, stay in tune with my body. and i would say i was normal health. you were a coach as well? yes, i coach youth football, american football here in the united states, in newjersey, in southern newjersey, just across the river from philadelphia. eighth grade boys about 13 years old, and i run up and down the field quite a bit. well, brett, i think the other member of our conversation has something in common with you — also a sports coach. i want to introduce brendan sheridan from west yorkshire here in england. brendan, how's today so far? ah, yeah, it's a bright, sunny day, so — which helps getting up. but similar days to all the others since i've come out of icu at pinderfields. you have also spent quite a lot

of time in intensive care. and i think like brett, you were pretty healthy going in. covid—i9 then hit you very fast, didn't it? uh, yeah. you know, i train 5—6 times a week, just like the — like brett. one day i got up fine, just started getting shortness of breath, no symptoms of covid, pretty healthy, keeping myself fit and ten hours later i almost stopped breathing and then and woke up two weeks later out of a coma. do you remember coming out of that? do you remember that moment when you woke up and how it felt? uh, yeah, but it's what keeps me awake at night. just the first time i obviously knew that something was — obviously something was seriously wrong because i woke up on the ventilator and the hood on. you know, helping me breathe.

because i had picked up another infection and got pneumonia while i was in there. i had to be packed in ice to bring my temperature down, which obviously froze my body a little bit, so i couldn't really move when i first woke up. you know, a bit of panic set in when i realised where i was and what was up with me. brett, do you remember that point when you were taken off the ventilator, came out of the coma and realised that people were looking at you like you were some sort of exhibit? yes. i was in what they call a negative pressure room. i didn't know quite where i was. and i remember them sort of telling me that they were going to pull a tube out. i was still sort of midway asleep at that point. they walked me through the process, told me to take a deep breath, they pulled the tube out and asked me to open my eyes,

and there was a world of people standing in front of me, and sort of this double—paned glass room where the medical personnel were all geared up in protective equipment. some behind one in a vestibule, still getting clothed up, some who were already in the room with me, giving me oxygen to make sure that i could continue to breathe. um, yeah, it was an interesting experience. just like brendan, i couldn't move very much and i was starting to wonderjust how i got there and what had transpired and how long i had been out. i think both of you were the first patient in the hospital that you were in to be put onto a ventilator. brendan, did you have that feeling that hospital staff — obviously trying their hardest — but they're dealing with something new? um, yeah, i suppose it was traumatic for everybody, notjust obviously

the patients, but the staff as well. because obviously it's a new pandemic and i suppose they're winging it a little bit. but obviously the safety comes first. but, yeah, i can — i just remember especially in pinderfields icu, just how overrun the staff was. you know, from one patient to another. when i started to come out and realise — but i didn't actually find out what i'd actually been through until i had my memory coming back and icu nurses were coming up to the wards to see how i was. obviously i was first on the ventilator and the youngest, i think, in pinderfields to have covid—i9. but, you know, pretty close to death twice, i think. speaking to family members, so, obviously it's traumatic, the ripple effect it has on the staff and obviously the families is huge. so, it's, yeah, a pretty daunting experience, but we're finding out little bits after i woke up. and then coming out of that

intensive care experience for both of you. brett, i know that you feel you're lucky to be in the rehab centre that you're in now, but it isn't a given that you get to go to a rehab centre? no, it's not. we had to find a facility that was, you know, willing to accept a previously positive covid—i9 patient. the folks at this location hadn't taken any prior to me, prior to myself, and were still considering whether or not they were going to take any covid—i9 recovery folks. i am really grateful that they did. this is an amazing place. they've now have an entire floor dedicated to covid—i9 recovery. you told me it took you about a month to be able to sit up without motion sickness and get out of the bed. and you still have

problems, don't you? your kidney, is that acute kidney failure that you're struggling with still? actually, um, yeah. i had some motion sickness, so that every time — it was really hard to start my rehab because every time i would sit up i would get very dizzy, my blood pressure would drop, my heart rate would elevate and that was about all i could do for the first couple of weeks of rehab. they really were just trying to figure out what those issues were. they discovered that i had a vestibular problem and they performed the vestibular manoeuvre on me and that really was the start of being able to do some more physical rehab. it took a couple of hours to really clear my inner ear and the balance issues that i was having. and then we slowly got to the point where i was able to stand. it took about 2—3 weeks after i got here just to get there. and when i could first stand,

i could only stand for 15 to 20 seconds at a time. i was just so exhausted from having been down for so long, between the time i was in the coma and the time i was too dizzy to get up out of bed. it was probably about five weeks. and my body was just so deconditioned that i would — my legs would shake and i would lose my breath very easily. now i'm able to walk about the length of a football field. so, that's gotten a lot better. my kidneys have not recovered yet. we're still hopeful, but we're talking about converting me from acute to chronic kidney failure here in a couple of weeks if we don't see better results, and what that might mean. brendan, i know you'll sympathise with just how hard it is to get back on your feet and get going. but also, we've talked about the mental scars,

i know it's difficult sleeping. you get flashbacks, don't you? yeah. and they tend to be getting worse as the weeks go on. i think i've had about 16 hours of sleep in two weeks. i'm constantly waking up as if i'm suffocating and still in hospital. and then not being able to get my breath back in bed, which makes me panic. but then the other flashbacks are obviously because of how fast it happened. i couldn't — i have flashbacks of not saying goodbye to my kids and my family and telling them i love them, if that was the case, that i wasn't going to be around anymore. and at one point my life flashing before my eyes in hospital and nobody acknowledging me and trying to get people's attention. and i could hear my mum and my brother and my kids talking to me and ijust couldn't, theyjust couldn't hear me

and it's...even now it gets me, it chokes me a little bit because — i can sympathise with brett. i was a little bit quicker in my recovery and you know, it's unfortunate for brett, that he's actually suffering a little bit more than me, but i suppose with the game of sport that he's in, he's a tough cookie and i'm sure he'll recover pretty quickly and fingers crossed that he does. brendan, i'm sure everyone watching... our hearts go out to you and we appreciate you sharing your experience with us. i want to give the last word to brett, because brett, you might be going home tomorrow. that must be so uppermost in your mind — just getting home again. it truly is. i miss my family. i know that they miss me. and i'm ready to a sort of, restart my life.

you know, when i woke up in the hospital, there were so many things that were wrong that i wasn't sure life was ever going to be the same as it was. i'm very excited to get home and try to do the best we can to get back to where we were and spend some more time together. thank you. brett breslow and brendan sheridan, thank you very much giving us your stories. next, a 24—year—old hospital doctor who's also a national beauty queen. in fact, the first south asian—born miss england. i've been speaking to bhasha mukherjee in between her nightshift at a hospital in lincolnshire. none of us prepared for this at medical school, covid—i9 pandemics and things like that. we prepared for the usual heart

attacks and strokes. but it's nice to see that everybody has each other‘s back at this time and is prepared to help each other. i'm not seeing a lot of one—upmanship or anything like that, because everyone's in the same boat. in a way, it is called the great equaliser for that reason — no—one knows any better than any other person about this disease. when you say you have that feeling that everybody has each other‘s back, i know that when you were first announced, when you first became miss england, you experienced something of a racist backlash, and i wanted to ask you about the attitudes then and perhaps what might be changing. yes, so i always felt a sense of, you know, imposter syndrome being miss england in a way. i felt great, absolutely, that i was representing south asians and migrant populations in this country who equally are a part

of this country. we've been living here for years and years and generations, but in a way there's always been a divide where immigrant families and, you know, ethnic minority families, we always keep to ourselves and we don't always mix in the way that, i suppose, everybody else does and caucasians do. so i felt when i did win that there was a lot of backlash, especially on the media and on press, where people kept saying the same comment over and over again, "0h, she's not english, though. she's not english, though." but now i feel a great pride that under those comments, they're still there, bear in mind, i have some people saying, "she's a doctor, she is serving on the front lines." you probably know some of the statistics that some of the highest risk

populations are the bame populations, but yet they make up such a large portion of the key worker population. so it makes me feel proud that we are finally able to show people that we are notjust here to steal people's jobs but we're actually here to serve the country and be as, you know, equal in the playing field in terms of being a true british citizen. i feel great that i am holding this title of miss england, and also serving the country, i'm serving england at a time of need. so yeah, i feel great about that. you were a first, i think, the first miss england of south asian background, so you going to draw a lot of attention, and when you talk about the way the virus discriminates, appears to discriminate too, that gets attention? yes. covid's not the only one. there's been many other diseases before covid that have done

this, and we just are seeing this more because covid shows a direct relationship and it shows it very quickly. things like diabetes, things like heart disease, several diseases that are more common in ethnic minorities and bame populations. we've just ignored it because they're chronic illnesses, but as we're seeing, actually chronic illnesses are one of the reasons why you might perform poorly with covid—i9. but for us at the front lines, doctors and medics, this isn't too surprising actually because we do see this in medicine is quite a lot. viruses and many other diseases are just the same — they treat you based on your genetics and your susceptibility to a disease is based on your genetics. of course, if you're from a certain ethnicity,

genetics has a massive role in what diseases you have. one of the positive things you told me, dr mukherjee, was as far as the patients are concerned, especially if they're infected with covid—i9, if they're desperately ill or dying, you become their family, they reach out to you and you're not just a doctor to them. it's been a very humbling experience for me on the front lines, because the hospital i work at, boston in lincolnshire, predominantly... before i went to work there, i'd heard they have quite conservative populations there, and the hospital actually has some of the most diverse employees in terms of there's lots of african doctors there, lots of indian doctors there, pakistani doctors there, but seeing that actually covid has actually flipped it all on its head. at this point in time,

everybody that's in hospital is alone and at this point of time, a nurse, a doctor, whatever their skin colour, is the only person who is able to take that pain away, is able to hold their hand, is able to stroke their forehead. and i myself have done this at odd hours of the night, at 3am i've been the first person to see a patient who's really in a lot of pain and they do want to hold your hand. and then i do actually think — look at this, this is humanity at its best. when you're in pain, you forget about all these preconceived notions. you just look at the person as another human to hold and touch and get comfort from. i feel very privileged and humble to be in a position to give people that support and comfort.

bhasha mukherjee, i want to ask you about what comes next for you and patients. we seem to be getting past the surge, do things get easier or are there other problems? the surge was a time where the nhs, i feel, was the most supported. in terms of the government, various charities, they came forward, they acted swiftly, they were right there and even the nhs itself, the trusts and the managerial point of view, they acted responsibly to try to get more staffing and more resources, more incentives for the frontliners, but now we're past the surge, we're actually going to be struggling more. it doesn't sound usual for that to happen but that's the case. if you think about it, when covid was happening, we, in a way, stopped

a lot of the usual services of the hospital because we were only focusing on the really unwell and the really emergency cases. so there's a massive backlog of everything that we stopped during the surge. now also that we're coming past the surge, we're having to return back to normalcy. and some of the incentives, some of the resources and some of the staffing and services have been taken away. so this restoration period is actually going to be more difficult to handle, ifeel, than the actual peak. we are already seeing a reflection of this at my hospital. the stresses are high because the rotors are being changed. the usual doctors are having to work longer hours to compensate for the way things were running beforehand, and now we're seeing more and more patients returning back to work because obviously the government and everybody‘s tired of being in lockdown, and now they're seeing the usual

pressures in a&e again. there's certain patients who don't need to be in hospital coming back again. the population as a whole is maybe starting to think that it's over, but it's not over. the hospitals still have active covid patients and it's still dangerous for you to go into hospital unless you absolutely have to. doctor mukherjee, would would you say is the final thing you would like our viewers to take away from what you're saying today? what should be remembered most, do you think? what i would like people to understand from what i'm telling you is that — that it's time that we start to really introspect, think about the way we've been treating people, not forget what covid taught us.

still maintain some of the things that we've learned from it, because if we don't, then we're going to be back to square one. it's still too soon to break lockdown rules. people are already having parties at home and stuff. please try to hold on and try to make this time part of your life rather than just a small period that we have to do kind of hold tight and get through it. we have to get normalised and adapt to this. that's what i'd like to say — take it in your stride. we are all struggling at this time, so let's do it altogether. bhasha mukherjee, miss england 2019 and a hospital doctor on the front lines. i'm philippa thomas, thank you forjoining me on coronavirus: your stories.

hello there. we have got more dry and sunny weather through the weekend, with the heat that has tended to be concentrated on southern england over recent days, becoming the more extensive across the uk, although temperatures will be dropping a few degrees across east anglia and south—east england as fresh air arrives behind this cold front. across the north of scotla nd cold front. across the north of scotland we have also got weather fronts but this one is bringing some rain and overtime the rain northern scotla nd rain and overtime the rain northern scotland will turn little bit lighter and increasingly patchy as well. going to be a few mist and fog patches towards lincolnshire and noticed it as a fresh start to thursday across eastern england, eight degrees in norwich is that pressure air works in. thursday itself, any low cloud is clearing away itself, any low cloud is clearing r itself, any low cloud is clearing away very quickly, rain petering out, brokering up northern scotland. a sunny day for england and wales.

womanjust a sunny day for england and wales. woman just about everywhere, 26 in london and 22 through thursday. —— walmart just about everywhere.

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: the death toll in the united states from the pandemic has now officially passed 100,000. europe after lockdown — how different countries across the continent are relaxing the rules. president trump says he's asked the fbi and department ofjustice to investigate the death of george floyd in police custody in minneapolis. and no luck with the weather for the launch of the first privately—owned spacecraft to the international space station.