Purple Pansy

I'm afraid this was the best I could manage today and that wasn't easy as it's been incredibly windy, so no butterflies, bees or butterflies around. I sat in the garden this afternoon, but had to retrieve my baseball hat a few times! 

Day 68 / Day 60 of Lockdown / Day 10 of Step 1 (for my record only)
UK deaths up 351 to 36,393 and R is unchanged (2-3 week time lag). Children & adolescents are found to be half as likely to catch the virus as adults. Deaths in Brazil pass 20,000. In the US it's reported that c35% of CV carriers have no symptoms and that the best estimate is that 40% of transmissions occur before people feel unwell - no wonder it spreads so fast. 

The briefing focused on the new quarantine arrangements for people entering the UK from 8th June. Quarantine is for 14 days, with an initial fine of up to £1k for breaching this, with future breaches resulting in prosecution, unlimited fine and possible expulsion. There are a few exceptions and the policy is to be reviewed every 3 weeks. Giving up foreign holidays for a while is surely a small price to pay to control the virus.

Mortgage holidays extended by 3 mths. Apr borrowing £62bn, the highest on record. Biggest fall in retail spending in Apr of 18%, to me this is less than expected probably due to 30.7% being internet shopping (also the highest on record). 2nd phase of Oxford vaccine trial starts on 10,000 people from a wider age range. It's been identified that people in the worst Covid cases have a very low number of T-cells, with promising news that an existing drug which boosts T-cells is being trialed.