Police to hand out on-the-spot fines for anyone not wearing a face covering in shops from July 24

Retailers have today called for more clarity after the government announced face masks will become compulsory in all stores from next week.

Shoppers who fail to comply risk fines of £100 under the plans to stop a second wave of coronavirus.

Only young children or those with certain disabilities will be exempt from the new regulations which come in on Friday, July 24.

Retailers will be asked to advise customers to wear masks but their staff will not be expected to enforce the law.

Instead, police will be given powers to dish out fines.

The law will require people to wear simple cloth face coverings, rather than the medical grade masks used by front-line NHS workers. 

But speaking on Radio 4 today, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan admitted one in ten people are still refusing to wear a mask on public transport. 

He said a suggestion that people refusing to wear a face covering on the Tube were not being fined or stopped was ‘not true’. 

Retailers will be asked to advise customers to wear masks but their staff will not be expected to enforce the law. Pictured: Members of the public wear face masks as they shop on Princess Street, Edinburgh

Only young children or those with certain disabilities will be exempt from the new regulations which come in on Friday, July 24. Pictured: Pedestrians pass a John Lewis store in central London

Masks are already compulsory on public transport and the Prime Minister hinted on Friday that the Government is poised to extend the requirement to retail premises to help control the virus spread

The British Retail Consortium today welcomed the ‘clarity’ on the use of face coverings in shops in England after days of ‘mixed messages’.

‘The clarity we’re going to get today for implementation in about 10 days’ time is going to give a level of reassurance,’ chief executive Helen Dickinson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

‘What we saw over the weekend with mixed messages, I think made it really difficult for people to understand what it was they’re expected to do.

‘Clarity is really important to give people that confidence. It is absolutely true that sales and footfall are returning only very slowly to our high streets and town centres and shopping centres up and down the country.’ 

Sadiq Khan also said he welcomes the Government’s ‘U-turn’ on making face coverings mandatory in shops in England.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said the evidence from experts was the measure could make a ‘massive difference’ in helping to tackle coronavirus.

He said: ‘The advice is, where it’s not possible to keep your social distance, particularly if you’re in confined spaces indoors, shops, supermarkets and the like, gyms is another good example, this small measure can make a massive difference along with other measures.

‘Clearly, if it’s not practical to do so, think of a pub, a bar, or restaurant, in those places, it shouldn’t be mandatory.’ 

He told BBC Radio 4 that British Transport Police (BTP) and enforcement officers were using ‘encouragement where possible’ as well as stopping travellers, asking them to leave or issuing fines if the failed to comply with the rule requiring the wearing of face coverings on public transport.

Mr Khan added: ‘Our enforcement officers and the BTP have stopped in the region of 18,500 people stopping travelling because they refuse to wear face coverings and actually the fines that have had to be issued so far is only 59.

‘And during rush hour we have more than 90% compliance.’ 

He claimed the government’s concern about police standing on the streets issuing fines was ‘misfounded and misplaced.’

He added: ‘The problem is not the issue of enforcement, the problem is the mixed messaged and the confused communication, that has been the issue. 

‘The government needs to ensure that the test, trace, isolate system is fully operational – all these things will lead to consumer confidence and the public having confidence to return to the shops.

‘If it’s safe to do so of course I want people to return to return to the fantastic culture we have in London, to their place of work if it’s safe to do so. 

‘It’s really important the government gets a grip, makes sure the public has confidence the virus is under control. Then you’ll see people returning to the shops, return to work.’

The Daily Mail revealed yesterday that the Government has procured ten factory production lines capable of making five million masks a week.

Face coverings have been compulsory on public transport since June 15 and, last Friday, Scotland ordered shoppers to wear them.

Government sources said guidance on masks in other settings would be ‘kept under review’.

The government’s move to make face mask compulsory comes as:

• The UK announced 11 more coronavirus deaths in the preliminary daily toll, taking the total number of victims to 44,840;
• More than 100 outbreaks of coronavirus in schools, businesses and pubs are ‘swiftly and silently’ being dealt with every week across the UK, Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed;
• The drive to bring workers back to the office from coronavirus lockdown hit a roadblock after some of country’s biggest firms said only 40 per cent will return from home;
• Councils in England are preparing to make significant cuts in jobs and services after losing income on investments in airports, cinemas and offices amid the coronavirus pandemic;
• British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is preparing to launch human trials of an antibody treatment that could protect old and vulnerable people from coronavirus;
• Beauty salons, nail bars and tattoo shops in England opened the first time in four months as part of the latest relaxation of lockdown restrictions;
• Immunity to Covid-19 might be lost within months, according to research that suggests the virus could infect people on an annual basis, like the flu.

The move may anger those who find them uncomfortable or dislike the idea of state compulsion.

One libertarian Tory MP has already vowed to stop shopping rather than wear a mask. 

But Boris Johnson yesterday said they were important in confined spaces as ‘a kind of extra insurance’.

A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘There is growing evidence that wearing a face covering in an enclosed space helps protect individuals and those around them from coronavirus. 

A further 21 people have died from coronavirus in 24 hours bringing the UK’s total death toll to 44,819 

‘The Prime Minister has been clear that people should be wearing face coverings in shops and we will make this mandatory from July 24.’

The move follows days of confusion about the Government’s stance on the issue.

On Sunday, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said that while it was ‘basic good manners’ to wear masks in shops it would not be made compulsory.

He said it was ‘always better to trust to people’s common sense’.

A Whitehall source played down the idea of a Cabinet split, but acknowledged that Mr Gove’s intervention had been ‘unhelpful’.

Mr Johnson, who was initially sceptical about face masks, yesterday said there was growing evidence they could help slow the spread of coronavirus.

Speaking on a visit to the London Ambulance Service yesterday, the Prime Minister, who was wearing a mask, said they had ‘a great deal of value in confined spaces’ where people are coming into contact with those they do not normally meet.

He added: ‘As the virus comes down in incidence and we have more and more success, I think face coverings are a kind of extra insurance we can all use to stop it coming back and stop it getting out of control again.’

Face masks have been compulsory in shops in many European countries for months. The Czech Republic introduced the requirement on March 18, with Austria following suit on April 6, Germany on April 22, France on May 10 and Spain on May 20.

But in the UK, both Government scientists and ministers have questioned their value.

In March, deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries said wearing a mask could ‘trap the virus’ and cause the person wearing it to breathe it in.

‘For the average member of the public walking down a street, it is not a good idea [to wear a face mask],’ she added.

But scientists have changed their view as evidence of the risk of asymptomatic and airborne transmission has grown. Officials now believe that face coverings can help stop people spreading the virus, particularly when they do not know they have it.

Royal Society president Dr Venki Ramakrishnan yesterday said the evidence was ‘now quite strongly in favour of using face coverings in enclosed spaces where we’re likely to come into contact with strangers’.

He added: ‘The Government should be very clear. It’s not consistent to make it mandatory on public transport and not make it mandatory in other enclosed and busy public spaces, because the behaviour of the virus is the same in all of these spaces.’

The move is part of a wider push to open up the economy and give consumers confidence to go out and spend.

Downing Street yesterday confirmed that official advice to work from home where possible is now under review. The PM said last week that people should ‘start to go to work now if you can’.

Mr Johnson is planning to set out a new ‘road map’ this week setting out a nine-month timetable for easing social distancing measures in the hope of giving people the confidence to return to near-normal life.

But Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope said the mask policy would have the opposite effect. Speaking at the weekend, he said: ‘I don’t think I will be going in shops if they impose a condition that people wear masks.’

James Daunt, managing director of bookseller Waterstones, yesterday said asking customers to wear a face covering was not a problem.

He told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘If it reassures people, then it is a perfectly reasonable measure to take.’

But Mr Daunt said staff working across his chain of stores could not be asked to police the policy. ‘There will be a tiny, tiny minority of people who will be confrontational over it and it is not the position of shop workers to enter into that situation,’ he said.

Labour health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth said the Government’s policy was muddled.

He added: ‘Why yet again have ministers been slow in making a decision in this pandemic, and why will it take another 11 days before these new guidelines to come into force?’ 

Eight out of 10 Covid-19 patients died in one English hospital as NHS data reveals ‘stark’ differences in death rates across the country with fewer than half surviving at 11 trusts
By Sam Blanchard Senior Health Reporter for MailOnline

Coronavirus death rates vary massively across NHS hospitals in England, according to shocking data.

Eight out of 10 infected patients have died in one hospital in the South West — but just 12.5 per cent succumbed to the illness in a London trust. 

The data, seen by The Guardian, showed more than half of Covid-19 patients have died in at least 11 hospital trusts across the country.

Data from a study presented to government scientists last month showed the death rate for hospitalised patients is 28 per cent across the UK, on average.

But information being sent to senior doctors, which the NHS denies is official, shows that this varies wildly between hospitals.

Twenty-six NHS trusts had death rates lower than a quarter — between 12.5 per cent and 25 per cent. But rates were higher at the remaining 109.

Experts said the huge disparity in death rates did not necessarily mean patients were getting worse care, but that it could be a consequence of the population in the area or the number of patients they had treated. 

Older people are more likely to die from coronavirus and some regions have far more older people — the average age in the South West, for example, is eight years higher than it is in London.  

NHS England said it did not produce the data — which the newspaper said had been adjusted for age — and say they appear to be ‘experimental’.

For comparison, the national death rate for everyone who tests positive — not only  hospital patients — is 4.2 per cent in the US, 4.6 per cent in Germany, and 15.5 per cent in the UK. The infection itself is thought to kill around 1 per cent of all cases — but not everyone who catches the virus gets spotted.

Hospitals across the country have varying death rates from coronavirus, according to secret NHS data (stock image)

The NHS data showed that two of the five hospital trusts with the highest death rates were in the South West — one with 80 per cent and another with 62 per cent.

Specific trusts were not named in the report, The Guardian said, and were referred to only by the region they were in.

Other hospitals where more than half of patients were dying included one in the North West (68 per cent), the East of England (60 per cent) and one in London (54 per cent).

Three of the hospitals with the lowest death rates were in London — with 12.5, 14 and 15 per cent — along with one in the Midlands (13 per cent) and one in the South East (15 per cent). 

Dr Alison Pittard, chief of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, told the newspaper: ‘That is a huge variation, a huge range. 

‘I’m surprised at the degree of variation. A spread between 12.5 per cent and 80 per cent is quite stark.’

She added: ‘We know that poorer communities and BAME communities have a higher risk of mortality, so if a trust is in an area of higher-risk individuals you would expect that trust’s Covid-related mortality rate to be higher.’

The exact factors that have played into some NHS trusts having significantly higher death rates are not clear.

The ethnicity of patients in a NHS trust’s area, how wealthy they are and their general health are all contributing factors.

Data has shown non-white people, those in poorer areas and people with existing health conditions are all more likely to die if they catch Covid-19.

Hospitals with small numbers of patients may also have an artificially high death rate because an increase of one could push the average up significantly.  

The NHS data gives a breakdown of 135 major hospital trusts around the country and calculated how many of the diagnosed patients died, to get a rate of death.

It is not publicly available, however, so it is unknown whether some regions’ hospitals were suffering significantly more fatalities than others. 

NHS England denied that it had produced the data.

It said in a statement: ‘We do not recognise these figures, which appear to be experimental analysis of unverified data, but there is now a wide range of published data on the role that health inequalities, including pre-existing conditions and other health factors, have played when it comes to the impact of Covid, including from the ONS and PHE.

‘The NHS is accelerating work to tackle health inequalities, and will shortly be providing local services with a range of actions they should build in to their plans for the coming months.’ 

Public Health England publishes weekly data showing how deaths break down by region, which shows that London has the highest overall death rate for all patients.

In the capital 19.8 per cent of people — not necessarily all admitted to hospital — have died of the virus, compared to 19.6 per cent in the West Midlands and 18.6 per cent in the East of England.

The lowest regional death rate has been in Yorkshire and The Humber, where 13 per cent of people officially diagnosed have died.

The other regions had death rates of 16 per cent in the South West, 15.9 per cent in the South East, 15.6 per cent in the North East, 15.4 per cent in the North West and 14.8 per cent in the East Midlands.

Separate regional data from Public Health England shows that London has the highest death rate among people who have officially tested positive for Covid-19. There, 19.8 per cent of patients have died

Government papers published last week after being presented to officials in June showed that the average hospital death rate has been just over a quarter across the UK. 

A study of 64,066 hospital patients with Covid-19 in the UK found that 28 per cent of them – more than one in four – die with the disease.

Deaths were higher for people admitted to intensive care, of whom 35 per cent succumbed to the disease, and even higher for those who had to be put onto ventilators – 42 per cent.

The COVID-19 Clinical Information Network (CO-CIN), comprised of university experts from around the UK, presented the results to SAGE – the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies – on June 22.

The study had found people spend an average of nine days in hospital if they are admitted with coronavirus, or catch it while on a ward.

Some 16 per cent of patients require high-flow oxygen therapy to help them breathe.

The most common symptoms for hospital patients are coughs (63 per cent), fever (62 per cent) and shortness of breath (61 per cent) – but a worrying one in 16 people (6 per cent) claimed to have had no symptoms at all, the study found.