Coronavirus news you may have missed overnight: UK lockdown unlikely to be lifted soon, as 92 care homes suffer new outbreaks in 24 hours

The latest on the impact of the virus across the world

The global coronavirus pandemic has now infected more than 2 million people worldwide and an estimated 119,000 deaths have been recorded.

In the UK, more than 88,000 people have been confirmed to have caught Covid-19 and 11,329 people have died in hospital after contracting the disease.

As the virus continues to cause chaos around the world, here’s your daily briefing of recent news items you may have missed.

UK coronavirus lockdown unlikely to be lifted soon, says foreign secretary

Ministers are not expecting to lift the lockdown this week despite “positive signs” of progress in the UK’s battle against coronavirus, Dominic Raab has said.

The foreign secretary, who is deputising for Boris Johnson while he convalesces, said restrictions were unlikely to be eased when the government’s scientific advisory committee meets later this week, as the evidence showed the UK has “still not passed the peak” of the outbreak.

But Mr Raab insisted the UK was “starting to win” in its battle against the virus, as the public were overwhelmingly observing the strict social-distancing guidelines put in place by ministers.

92 care homes suffer new Covid-19 outbreaks in last 24 hours

There have been 92 new coronavirus outbreaks in care homes across Britain in the last 24 hours, the government has warned.

Speaking at a regular news conference on Monday Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, said around 13 per cent of such homes had been affected in total so far.

The news is particularly worrying because medical advice suggests that people over 70 years of age and with certain pre-existing health conditions are particularly vulnerable to developing serious Covid-19 symptoms.

Labour called for daily figures to be published of people dying in care homes so that the “true scale” of the problem could become clear. The government is also expected to push for increased testing in care homes.

Coronavirus economic effects hitting ethnic minorities and young people hardest

Ethnic minorities and young people are taking a disproportionate financial and employment hit from the coronavirus pandemic, exclusive polling for The Independent reveals.

The “shocking” findings sparked a call from race equality campaigners for urgent government action to protect communities who provide an outsized share of those at risk from the disease as they continue to work in essential frontline services like health and social care and bus driving.

The BMG poll laid bare the scale of hardship across the country resulting from the lockdown measures to tackle the outbreak, with almost a third of all households seeing their finances cut and more than one in 20 saying that they have lost over half their income.

Government increases ventilator capacity by just 200 in one week – despite health secretary’s claim 1,500 more would be available

Ministers have increased the number of life-saving ventilators available to NHS patients by just 200 in one week, despite the health secretary insisting seven days ago there would be “another 15 hundred” available.

On Monday, No 10 said “over 10,000” mechanical ventilators were now operational for seriously ill patients, as the government scrambles to meet a target of 18,000 for an anticipated peak of coronavirus cases in the coming days.

“There’s been an increase of around 200 over the past week,” the prime minister’s official spokesperson said. “There are another 2,000 mechanical ventilators on order plus thousands of provisional orders for industry designed ventilators.”