Coronavirus news you may have missed overnight: Boris Johnson drops NHS fee for migrant health workers as Trump refuses to let press see him wearing mask

Number of infections worldwide passes 5 million

The coronavirus pandemic will see the UK entering its ninth week in lockdown. The government began easing restrictions in England last week, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland setting out roadmaps for their exit strategies in the following weeks.

As of Thursday, 250,908 people have tested positive for Covid-19, with 36,042 deaths in the UK. The number of cases worldwide has now topped 5 million.

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

Boris Johnson orders removal of NHS migrant surcharge from health and care workers

Following intense pressure to get rid of the £624-a-year NHS surcharge for migrant health and care workers, the prime minister has ordered its removal in a humiliating U-turn one day after telling the House of Commons it would stay.

The order comes days after The Independent revealed home secretary Priti Patel had quietly dropped a review of the surcharge issue which she had promised.

Dame Donna Kinnair, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), welcomed the move but said it was “a shame it took this pandemic for the government to see sense”.

The RCN has campaigned for two years for migrant health staff to be exempted from the surcharge. Figures from the RCN show that newly-qualified NHS nurses born overseas would have to work for a whole month to pay off the fee when it rises from the current £400 to £624 for adults and £470 for children in October.

Dame Donna said: “Of course, nursing staff will only breathe a sigh of relief when they hear the details of how the Immigration Health Surcharge will be lifted. Overstretched health and care services will struggle to pay this from their existing budgets and government must consider that, and any action must not be limited to the NHS.”

Donald Trump removes mask during Ford plant visit as he ‘didn’t want the press to see it’

The US president refused to wear a mask while touring a Ford Motor Company facility in Michigan, saying he did not want to give members of the media the “pleasure” of seeing him in it despite pleas from the state’s governor and attorney general.

Donald Trump has repeatedly resisted wearing a mask in public. “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” he said during the visit. “It was very nice. It looked very nice. They said not necessary.”

Bill Ford, chairman of the company, said it was “up to” the president whether he wanted to wear a mask or not, despite the facility’s rules that everyone must wear a mask. Mr Trump was surrounded by company executives who wore facial coverings.

The state’s Democratic attorney general, Dan Nessel, urged the president to wear a mask prior to his visit.

“While my Department will not act to prevent you from touring Ford’s plant, I ask that while you are on tour you respect the great efforts of the men and women at Ford – and across this state – by wearing a facial covering.

“It is not just the policy of Ford, by virtue of the Governor’s Executive Orders. It is currently the law of this State.”

Worker contracted coronavirus from mink at breeding farm, say Dutch authorities

A worker on a mink breeding farm in the Netherlands caught Covid-19 from the animals, authorities there have said.

Two fur farms in the country were quarantined last month after mink, who are farmed for their fur, tested positive for Covid-19.

It is widely believed that the animals had first been infected by employees who had the virus.

Dutch agriculture minister Carola Schouten admitted that earlier advisories from her office saying people could infect animals, but not the other way around, were wrong.

She said in a letter to parliament that the Netherlands’ Institute for Public Health still believes the chance of transmission outside of the animals’ stalls is minimal.

The condition of the worker is not known.

Police wake up caravan tourists flouting lockdown rules in Cornwall

Caravan tourists who have broken coronavirus lockdown rules by travelling to Cornwall to stay the night have been woken up and told by police officers to move on.

Officers from Devon and Cornwall police went out on dawn patrol on Thursday in Newquay to deal with camper vans that had stayed in the region overnight, as the UK had its hottest day of the year so far on Wednesday.

The force tweeted: “We identified some visitors that had travelled to Newquay and stayed overnight against Public Health England advice and legislation.

“With engagement, explanation and education, they moved on. We love visitors to the town, come back later.”

Lockdown rules in England have eased slightly, allowing people to drive an unlimited distance for exercise purposes and meet up with one friend as long as social distancing rules are followed.

But the advice states that people are not allowed to leave their home to stay overnight at another location.

People with no symptoms ‘could be forced to isolate for a fortnight’ once track and trace measures begin

People who display no symptoms of coronavirus could be forced into isolation for two weeks once the nation moves into the track and trace phase of the response to the pandemic.

According to the Health Service Journal, John Newton, who is leading the country’s testing programme, told local NHS chiefs that people “who are deemed high risk contact of confirmed [Covid-19] cases will be told to self-isolate for 14 days, even if they have no symptoms at the time”.

The nationwide contact tracing system is set to launch by June, and will take advantage of mobile phone technology to tell people if they have come into contact with a carrier of the virus.

Current NHS guidance says people who do not have symptoms do not need to self-isolate, but it is believed that a large majority of those who have carried the virus may have done so without symptoms.

It comes as government data suggests around one in six people in London and one in 20 people in other parts of England have already been infected with the virus.

Business tycoon launches legal action against UK government over ‘unlawful’ lockdown measures

An aviation tycoon has issued legal proceedings against two senior ministers as he claims the coronavirus lockdown was introduced unlawfully and in breach of freedoms protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Simon Dolan, who owns Jota Aviation which has been delivering personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS, applied to the High Court for a judicial review of the lockdown.

The claim is against health secretary Matt Hancock and education secretary Gavin Williamson.

Mr Dolan’s lawyers threatened the government on 30 April that he would launch the legal action unless drastic steps were taken to ease the lockdown restrictions.

“At the heart of this historic case is the protection of freedom and liberty for 66 million people,” he said. “We are challenging a catastrophic set of decisions which will leave an indelible print from a boot which has stamped on the nation’s freedoms and will blight the lives of generation after generation.

“Every day that the lockdown remains in place is one more day the country cannot afford – on any level. For those reasons and more, this is very possibly the most important case of our lifetime.”