Scientists at Imperial College in london have begun human trials for a vaccine against the coronavirus. Theyre using an approach thats never been tried before if it works, a vaccine could be cheaper and easier to manufacture in mass quantities. There are more than a dozen trials under way around the world. New york and the neighbouring states of newjersey and connecticut are introducing a 14 day quarantine for visitors from nine other american states with high rates of infection. New cases of covid 19 in the us have risen to their highest level since april. A grand jury in georgia has indicted three men in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the unarmed black man who was shot and killed in february while out for a jog. The accused men were arrested in may and now face nine counts including murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment. One of the biggest in the british
aviation industry, swissport uk, is to cut more than half of its workforce. The firm, which provides Ground Handling services, is to lose more than 4,000 jobs because of the damage done to air travel by the pandemic. From manchester airport, our Business Correspondent sarah corker reports. They handle your luggage after youve checked in, manage freight and security and even de ice planes. Swissport is a vital link and familiar name at our airports. But the firm says to survive this crisis, it needs to cut more than half of its uk workforce, 4,500 jobs. Nathan is an aircraft handler and union rep at east midlands airport. Im really worried. Obviously, we knew that some kind of redundancies were coming, but not on the scale that theyve put out today. With things as they are, in the aviation, im going to struggle to get another job. Global travel restrictions brought the the aviation sector to a virtual standstill and passenger demand may not recover until 202a. This was gatwick today. Swissport handles flights at most international and Regional Airports across the uk, including operations at gatwick, heathrow and here, in manchester, but the runways and the skies have been eerily quiet for months now. And in a letter to staff, the companys chief executive said theyd coped with crises in the past but had never seen anything like coronavirus. And Major Airlines Like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have already announced they plan to cut tens of thousands ofjobs, and the industry wants more government support. We need to see an extension to the furlough scheme beyond 0ctober because were not going to be at full speed by october. We need to see, ideally, an end to the quarantine or as many air bridges up and
running as possible. Its a welcome start. But unions warn the scale of these job losses could threaten the very survival of our Regional Airports. There was a trickle of flights at manchester today, but this is an industry shrinking, adapting to a new reality with fewer aircraft in our skies. Sarah corker, bbc news, in manchester. Now on bbc news Philippa Thomas hears from people around the world about their extraordinary experiences during the pandemic and how covid 19 has changed their lives. Welcome to coronavirus your stories a programme about how covid 19 is changing the lives of people around the world. Im Philippa Thomas. This week, we are talking about birth and death. Ill be hearing from a british doctor whose job it is to talk to the dying about the ways this pandemic has transformed end of life care. But first, what the virus is doing to significantly change the experience of childbirth for women around the world. When we give birth, most of us want our partners to be with us. We want to be able to see the faces of midwives and doctors. We want to feel a sense of touch, notjust for medical reasons but for that sense of human connection. What if all that is gone . New mum Giannina White in tampa bay, florida had her little boy leo three months ago. In karachi, pakistan, neha makani manages a team of Community Midwives at a rural birthing centre. Can i come to you first, giannina . What has it been like with a newborn in lockdown . Its really hard for myself, to not to have a support team, to notjust have anybody pop over like family and friends or anything. Its a little bit more lonely than a normal new motherhood would be. For a first time mother, i guess youd normally would have expected to be having family and friends popping in, and midwives or health visitors. Yeah, and that doesnt really happen. Its more over the phone, calling, and just my mum pops over cause she quarantined herself, so thats about it. Neha, in karachi, as a midwife, and for the midwives that youre managing, how different has it been in this time of coronavirus . Its been a scary time for midwives and i think this is true of midwives and Healthcare Providers all over the world but is has come at the point with covid where our
Health Systems are crumbling. Midwives have had it hard for a number of reasons and again, a lot of it is because of the uncertainty and fear around the pandemic, people and midwives are scared for theirjobs, their health, their family and they are scared, they are actually scared of being able to do theirjob properly. I think a lot of this is because midwives arent considered front line health workers, so in a lot of places, they dont have access to ppe and they are not provided with masks and other protective gear. Giannina, how does it deal hearing to you that midwives are not considered key workers . Its just crazy, obviously, because they are so important. And especially right after having the baby, i cant even imagine not having the ability to speak to my 0bgyn or anyone, you need more. Theres no one else to speak to, so you rely on your doctor ever more. Giannina, you were able to have your husband cory with you, but even that has been taken away for quite a lot of other new mothers. Yeah, so my birth was one of the last. My week, and then after my birth, they took away the ability to have your husband or any partner, and you have to wear a mask to deliver, so i can imagine the girls after me, its a lot more stressful. I, luckily, was one of the last to have at least one visitor, and my husband. Ihearyou, giannina, talking about your experience but obviously youre in touch with other new mums or women who are about to be mothers. Im getting the sense ofjust high stress, and stress levels going up and down with the uncertainty of it all. Yeah, its really difficult to know what process orjourney youre going to have because it changes every day. When i went into the hospital, it changed that night and i didnt even know walking into the hospital
that it was going to change. So my sister in law is about to deliver in august and every single day we chat about how she has no idea what the hospital is going to be like in august and thats only two months away. So she is stressed out. And i can imagine. Im thankful that mine is done and over with, because every day is a gamble. Neha, what are you hearing from your midwives at the birthing centre about whether women are worried about coming to the birthing centre or the kind of state theyre in . Women are really worried about coming in and midwives are very anxious about providing care, and women are anxious going to a clinic and this has been a big issue for a number of reasons. A lot of women have started cancelling their antenatal appointments because wont come to the Health Centre where they are scared they might contract something. A lot of women also are choosing to deliver at home but not
with midwives, they are using traditional birthing attendants who are not qualified to provide Maternity Care and a lot of these births have devastating outcomes, because they are being done at home without any infection prevention. Giannina, hearing about women giving birth at home, do you think thats is that possibly happening more at home where you are . Definitely. Im still in a mother group a lot of girls during my birth were dropping out to have it at home just because they wanted their partner, they didnt know it would change the day they went in. Also, youre also in florida, and weve been hearing this week about the numbers still rising in florida. I think more than 100,000 cases . Yeah, yeah. Its very stressful. So were not really. We were leaving the house a little bit but were not as much. I mean, it went from two times
a week to maybe one now and we just ride around in the car to get an escape and we dont go anywhere because i dont want to expose leo to any of that. Neha, infections are still rising in pakistan as well, i think. What are you hearing from mothers and midwives . Have you heard of cases of covid i9 . Yes, so as of right now, our cases are definitely still going up. No signs of them coming down anytime soon. We are also seeing that a lot of women because of this are being turned away from hospitals because a lot of hospitals that cater to, that are maternity hospitals, are not equipped to manage covid cases because the staff there are not trained or they dont have the required resources so a lot of Covid Patients are being turned away, then they dont have a place to deliver. Neha, that means women are in more dangerous situations than they would have been before covid. Absolutely, yeah, because itjust takes away really something that was considered safe, something that a lot of people could take for granted, they arent able to anymore. I mean, im in the sector so i will get a call every two days from someone saying that someone i know is trying to get to a hospital. And their hospital has refused to take them. Or i spoke to this woman who was about to give birth and she was in a hospital and she told me that in the middle of her pregnancy, it was very high risk pregnancy, she. Her Blood Pressure went up a lot and she said, i went to the facility that i was supposed to deliver at, and they said, sorry, weve had a lot of cases, and a lot of doctors and nurses are sick, so we are not taking anyone in. It led to eventually her Blood Pressure going up, she went to three hospitals, she was turned away and she eventually suffered an eclamptic fit and this was something that was very avoidable but with the Health System crumbling, no one really knows how to deal with these things. And neha, there is also the question of cost because people are obviously losing theirjobs, their livelihoods around the world because of the pandemic, but getting hospital birthing Services Costs money. A lot of people have lost theirjobs and a lot of people had saved, but they dont have the money anymore. So part of what i do, i manage this mum and baby fund and the mum and baby fund bridges for people in financial emergencies during the maternity process and i started getting a lot of cases of people who have to deliver or they have to have a c section or need blood or the baby needs to go to an icu and they say, we dont have anything. They are not able to pay the fees, so a lot of them are choosing, some will take their baby out of an icu, some will choose to go to a Health Facility that may not be as good but everyones resources have just become a lot more limited so that goes towards the quality of care that people are receiving. Giannina in florida, or in the united states, do you think money is a factor as well because Health Insurance costs a lot . Yes, for sure. A lot of people are losing theirjobs. I am a teacher but i was on Maternity Leave and my husband didnt lose his job either but i cant even imagine. Im listening to her story, i cant imagine being turned away or not thing able to afford some in, thats really scary. I dont even know what i would do in that situation. Giannina, what would your advice be for other very new mothers or those were about to have their babies . Its very overwhelming. I know you get exasperated, you just get exhausted with everything happening. I would say take it one day at a time. Giannina white in florida and neha mankani in karachi sharing during the experiences of childbirth in pandemic. Im Philippa Thomas and youre watching coronavirus your stories, a programme about how covid i9 is changing lives around the world. Next, an english doctor whosejob it is to talk to the dying, to connect with, treat and comfort to those who are reaching the end of lives. Rachel clarke moved from her work in hospices to hospital wards to get closer to those in fact it. Everything transformed in the last few months and the majority of patients that ive been seeing in the hospital where i work had been very frail, overwhelmed, very quickly, by the illness. Sometimes they are so short of breath, they are struggling hard to breathe. They can barely talk at all and we almost have to communicate using gestures, so they nod and shake their heads to communicate with me. And its a real challenge wearing our ppe, our personal protective equipped mint, to communicate with the kind of care and compassion that youd normally like to because you have literal physical barriers between you and your patients. But we all try our utmost to convey that care and convey that every single patient matters. Its a bit of a unique situation, isnt it, because if youre dying and you cant touch anyone and you cant properly see anybody around you, that is really brutal . Absolutely, and i think thats one of the great cruelties of this disease, the fact the Infection Control measures not only put up these physical barriers between doctors and carers and their patients, so we have to be separated from them by gloves and masks and visors, but also family members very often have to be kept away, so although in my hospital we are now able to allow one, possibly two, members of a family to visit a loved one right at the end of life,
thats only very recently been the case, and so the tragedy as this pandemic has unfolded has been people in their hour really of greatest need, when they really desperately want another human presence, ideally someone they love and cherish, at their bedside, those people havent been there. So it has fallen onto us . The Healthcare Professionals . To try and fill that role. We can never replace a loved one but we can be there, we can deal down, we can hold peoples hands, we can tell people that we care about them, they matter to us, and at least theres a way of communicating some of that human warmth and compassion which is so important when anyones vulnerable, but particularly at the end of life. What more do you do to try to make that connection between the patient thats right in front of you, rachel, and the family, who very often isnt or cant be . Well, we have learned really on the job, as it were, weve had to make it up as we go along and weve tried to be creative and imaginative to help patients make those human connections and feel cared for even in the absence of loved ones. So a lot of conversations will happen over a tablet or a smartphone so a loved one can be there in the room via a tablet and communicate with their relative. And sometimes we use symbols, symbolic gestures, that can be enormously powerful. So if we know a patient is approaching the end of life in my hospital, a whole series of volunteers from the local community have made Little Hearts that they have crocheted out and we will show it to the family who cant be there on a tablet so they can see that as a symbol of care and love, and then when that patient dies,
we will give another of those hearts to the family, so its a symbolic way of showing the connection and the love has been there, and sometimes a family will choose to take back the heart that they knew was there in the final days with the patient who was suffering from coronavirus, and so they bring them back together again and can keep both of them. And all of those little gestures on the one hand are only small, theyre only symbols, but actually they can be incredibly important and i have spoken to family members who say that those gestures mean everything because they are a way of knowing that, for all their loved one feels a million miles away, they actually know that theyre in an environment with doctors and nurses who care
about them deeply. And when youre speaking to family members, do you get asked i think i would feel this how to have a conversation with someone who is dying, because there is a fear of saying the wrong thing and being inappropriate at this really important moment. People are often incredibly apprehensive about saying the wrong thing to somebody whose time is limited and who we know is approaching the end of their life. They think if they get the words wrong or if they are clumsy or inarticulate, they will somehow make things worse. If theres one message i could communicate to people as widely as possible, in my experience as a Palliative Care doctor, nothing could be further from the truth the one thing patients crave more than anything is to know that people care about them, that they love them, that theyre surrounded by care and compassion. And you can communicate that with the clumsiest most inarticulate words imaginable. You dont have to be eloquent, you dont have to Say Something beautiful. If all you say to somebody is, i love you desperately and i dont want to lose you, and im so, so sorry this is happening to you, that is a clear and powerful message and thats what people want to hear. I cant imagine any more emotionally intense work and with covid i9 thereve been so many cases, so many people dying so quickly, how do you manage, how do you cope at the end of a day with these sorts of conversations . There are moments where i have to make myselfjust steely hard, hard as nails, because its the only way i can do thatjob and in that moment, my feelings dont matter at all its only the patient and their families that matter. You can do that because youre trained to do it but i think at the end of the say sometimes, you come home and you feel utterly
bereft because you have a sense that this is happening over and over again in hospitals up and down the country. There have been times where i have had to pull over on the side of the road and actually stop driving on the way home and sit there and cry to myself in silence inside my car because i have felt so shocked by the speed of the pandemic and the relentlessness of it, the sheer numbers of people who are dying too quickly and too often. Its like nothing any of us have ever experienced, its like a battlefield environment. But you cry because you cant really take that home to your family, how can they understand what great what youre going through . But you get up the next day and you go back in because theres patients that need you and its the job you do. We do hear every day statistics, but that is a potent reminder that, of course, were talking about individuals, and youre talking about people seeing some real desperation and despair and resilience, isuppose, from families, but you are seeing emotions in the raw, rachel. I remember one family who i took two siblings to see their dying parents and one of the siblings turns to me, suddenly consumed with very understandable anger and said, i dont want him to be a statistic, i do not want him to be a statistic, hes my father. And i knew and he knew that tomorrow, in all likelihood, his father would be included in the daily statistics. He would be one of the 500 people who had died the day before, and it was heartbreaking because to these two siblings, this was a father, this was a colossus someone they had adored for their entire life and they didnt want to see him being reduced to a number. So the statistics, i think, can be terribly painful for bereaved families to hear. Rachel, id like to end at the beginning, in a way, and i dont know quite how to phrase this but im talking to you as a Palliative Care specialist. The sense i get from what you do is that covid is bringing us deaths in unimaginable numbers, but we shouldnt turn away from the fact of death and the processes of dying. Yes, i think there is no denying the fact that the last six months
have been stunningly traumatic for us all as we have been through this pandemic, but i dont believe it is wholly bleak. I think in times of upheaval and uncertainty, we actually learn and we can discover profoundly important truths about how we want to live our lives, who we want to be, how we want to do things differently, and i think this pandemic in a sense is a little bit like my work in a hospice with patients who are approaching the end of their life, only writ large on a global scale. And by that i mean that patients who know they are dying have this extraordinary capacity very often to really savour the time they have left, really focus on what matters, whats important, and all the things that we know deep down matter to us, like the love of our friends and family, compassion, kindness, how we relate to each other, all of that comes centrestage. And i think we have seen that happen with coronavirus as well. I think people have behaved remarkably compassionately towards each other. We have been a community in a way, a Global Community like never before, and that has been, for me, a startlingly uplifting thing to witness even in these times of bleakness and darkness. I think theres a lot to learn from the last six months, and i think perhaps more than anything, that we dont forget it, that we carry what weve learned through into our future and think, how do we want to do things differently rachel clarke, a doctor who dedicates her working life to the dying. Im phlippa thomas. Thank you forjoining us for this weeks coronavirus your stories. Hello. Wednesday was officially the hottest
day of 2020 so far 32. 6 celsius at london heathrow airport. Ithink, though, today may top that further. Were likely to see 33, again, i think somewhere towards the west of london or on into parts of the midlands. Make no mistake, it will be hot and humid day across the board. Were pulling our air in across western europe, originally from northern africa, and you can see the amber makes it all the way to the north of the uk for thursday. So, areas that have lagged behind a little with the temperatures, scotland and northern ireland, will move into the warmer air through the day. Notice some thunderstorms there towards the north west well see more of those a little later but generally, not much happens on that chart through thursday. Thats because basically its a day of blue skies and sunshine, and up go those temperatures. 30 degrees possible in central scotland, mid 20s for northern ireland, and as i said, possibly 33 somewhere further south. However, when it gets that hot, you know whats coming thunderstorms. Thursday evening, pretty quiet, very muggy, a lot of late sunshine, but then on into the small hours of friday, the thunderstorm start to break out, initially towards the west of the uk. It will take a while for them to ease the heat. So thursday night into friday, rather uncomfortable, some spots down no lower than 18 or 19 degrees celsius. Through friday daytime, though, those storms are going to come increasingly widespread. Some eastern areas will still see a lot of sunshine, feeling very muggy here indeed, whereas when the showers start to break out, we will feel the heat beginning to ease. So, a west east split in our temperatures on friday. Cooler, fresher with temperatures in the low 20s in the west, still possibly up to 30 in the east. But through friday and on into the weekend, this area of low pressure really does start to take hold from the atlantic. It moves away the high thats locked in, though hot air, as it moves, it brings in clear atlantic air. Gone the amber, in comes the fresher yellow. Not just fresher conditions, though, but much more unsettled conditions thanks to that area of low pressure. So you can see spots a io degree drop in temperature at the start of the weekend, were also going to see quite a few showers i think. This is bbc news welcome if youre watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. Im mike embley. Our top stories imposing new restrictions new york and two other states clamp down on travellers from the us where infection rates are surging. Inside the race for a vaccine we are with the team at Imperial College, london, using a revolutionary new approach to combat covid i9. It means that we can make the equivalent of 2 million doses in the volume of a litre. Imagine a litre bottle of lemonade, that would have 2 million doses in it. Three suspects arrested after the killing of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery are indicted on murder charges. In moscow, a show of military power on victory day,
with president putin about to ask the nation
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