Coronavirus news you might have missed overnight: Covid-19 set to re-emerge in society through care homes, NHS chief warns, as Boris Johnson claims UK past peak

Trump claims to have seen evidence of Covid-19's supposed origin in a Wuhan lab, while UK’s recession chancellor warns of longer-lived economic fallout

With more than 3.27 million people now confirmed to have contracted coronavirus worldwide, here’s the news on the pandemic you may have missed overnight.

Coronavirus set to re-emerge in society through care homes, warns NHS chief

NHS England’s senior incident director for coronavirus, Professor Keith Willett, informed hundreds of NHS chiefs on Thursday in a private online briefing that there has been a “shift in the recognition” of the extent to which Covid-19 is spreading between patients and staff within care homes, The Independent revealed.

“The expectation is that for the next few weeks … those care homes will be the epicentres of transmission back into society and feeding the endemic problem that we will have going forward,” he said, adding that the proportion of care-home residents dying had increased from a quarter to 30 per cent.

He also warned the health service was still in a “precarious” situation and could go back to the heights of the coronavirus surge within weeks or even days.

His comments come amid growing criticism that the NHS may have introduced the virus into care homes earlier in the epidemic when homes were told they had to take Covid-19 patients from hospitals to help free up beds on wards. PHE has said that around a third of all homes are now affected – totalling more than 4,500.

Boris Johnson says UK past coronavirus peak and ‘on downward slope’, insisting austerity ‘certainly not part’ of government’s economic response

Speaking at his first Downing Street briefing since being hospitalised with the virus, the prime minister came under fire for claiming his approach to the crisis had succeeded in “avoiding the tragedy” seen elsewhere in the world.

The latest death toll of 26,771 – up 674 in a day – puts the UK potentially on track to be the worst-hit nation in Europe.

Mr Johnson lauded Britain’s “massive collective effort” in averting “an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic where the reasonable worst case scenario was 500,000 deaths” – earning himself a rebuke from one Labour MP that he is living in a "fantasy land".

While he declared for the first time that the UK has passed the peak of the pandemic and is “on the downward slope”, he asked viewers to wait another week for a lockdown exit strategy.

He also sought to downplay fears that his government could revert to the austerity tactics of the past decade that have seen drastic cuts to public services.

"You know what my instincts are: I think the economy will bounce back strongly, I think this government will want to encourage that bounce-back in all kinds of ways," he told a reporter."

"I've never particularly liked the term that you just used to describe government economic policy and it'll certainly not be part of our approach. Austerity, by the way, was the term you just used."

‘I’d lose everything’: Pub and restaurant owners facing collapse of livelihoods join forces to demand payouts from insurers

Britain’s hospitality industry will likely be among the last parts of the economy to re-open, and many pubs fear they may have to close their doors to customers for good.

Most bars and pubs have insurance to cover them for an unexpected shutdown, or “business interruption” as its usually referred to in policy documents. Some policies even specifically cover an enforced closure by authorities, or closure due to disease, yet clauses in the small print mean insurers have so far paid out few claims.

“Coronavirus isn’t covered, because there's been no outbreak on my premises,” Chris Morgan, owner of the Admiral Benbow in Penzance, who pays £4,500 a year for his insurance policy to cover business interruptions due to infectious diseases among a range of eventualities, told The Independent.

“But If I’d had a case of Ebola in my pub, God forbid, I would have been covered. If I closed down because the whole of Cornwall outside my pub caught Ebola, I’d get nothing. It’s ridiculous.”

Now, a top law firm is offering publicans a potential lifeline. Mishcon De Reya has said it will look at hospitality businesses’ insurance policies for free and, where a group of them have a reasonable claim for a payout against a particular insurer, it will take action.

Trump says he has seen evidence coronavirus came from Wuhan lab

With the US by far the hardest-hit country in the world on paper, Donald Trump has ramped up his criticism of Beijing's early handling of the virus in recent weeks.

During an event on seniors that turned into a press conference yesterday, the US president was asked: “Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?”

He replied: “Yes, I have. And I think the WHO should be ashamed of themselves.”

Ned Price, a former CIA and Obama White House official, tweeted as Mr Trump was still speaking: “Whether the virus originated in a market or accidentally escaped a lab would have had no bearing on the warnings Trump received – and ignored – nor on the preparatory steps he chose not to take. This is all about manipulating intelligence for political ends.”

Alistair Darling warns coronavirus economic impact will be far worse than 2008 financial crash​

In a stark warning, the former Labour chancellor said the economic hit from the global pandemic would last longer and be "much, much worse because we are not yet in control of events".

Lord Darling, who led the Treasury during the financial crash, said the UK's ability to recover depends on decisions the government takes in the next three to four weeks and called for a clear plan on how the lockdown will be lifted.

Speaking at a briefing for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Lord Darling said: “You can deal with a bank crash fairly quickly but this is taking a lot longer.