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Some 2.7 million people in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where many Muslims live, were put under tighter restrictions on the eve of Eid al-Adha. Wedding receptions, gambling in casinos and eyebrow-threading continued to be banned when the government decided to ‘squeeze the brake pedal’ to control coronavirus, in the words of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. Aberdeen was put back into lockdown. People would have to wear masks in church from 8 August. The sudden actions came after new cases rose from a probable 2,800 to 4,200 a day, according to a survey by the Office for National Statistics, based on 116,026 swab tests collected over six weeks, which found 59 people with Covid-19. At the same time, two million people shielding themselves at home were allowed to come out; 600,000 of these were in work. Some beaches in the south of England were crowded as the temperature rose to 100.04°F (37.8°C) at Heathrow, the third highest ever recorded.
At the beginning of the week, Sunday 2 August, total deaths from Covid-19 stood at 46,193, with a seven-day average of 65 deaths a day. But for the six weeks up to 24 July, total deaths from all causes fell below the average for the time of year. Approval for a new test for Covid-19 called LamPore (developed by an Oxford company), which takes 90 minutes, was expected by the end of the week, with half a million being available. In coming months 5,000 machines supplied by DnaNudge (an Imperial College start-up company in White City, London), which can analyse nose swabs, are planned to provide 5.8 million tests. The government urged pharmaceutical companies to have six weeks’ supply of drugs in reserve for the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December.
A mixed bag of 36 peers were created, including Jo Johnson, the Prime Minister’s brother; Charles Moore, a former editor of The Spectator; Claire Fox, a former member of the Revolutionary Communist party and more recently a Brexit party MEP; Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Independent and Evening Standard; Sir Ian Botham the cricketer; and Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey and Frank Field, once independent-minded Labour MPs.
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