Health

David Furnish spoke to Victoria Macdonald about why they set up the AIDS testing pilot study.

While the pandemic continues to rage, tens of millions of people across the world are still living with HIV. 

In the seesaw of lockdowns, Wales is due to tighten up as England loosens up a fraction.

We were joined by Prof Steven Riley.

Health secretary Matt Hancock said the lockdown had helped bring the pandemic “back under control”.

Boris Johnson has defended his decision to put most of England into the top two tiers of coronavirus restrictions from Wednesday. 

We spoke to Prof Peter Johnson, the National Clinical Director for Cancer at NHS England.

It’s being described as a potential  “game changer” blood test that could help to save many lives – a test that can screen for more than 50 forms of cancer.

The Scottish government has announced that people hoping to form social bubbles over the Christmas holidays will be limited to a maximum of eight people, not including children. We spoke to the social psychologist Prof Stephen Reicher and asked him whether knowing that the restrictions will be loosened at Christmas will make people more likely…

Producer: Lee Sorrell In Malaysia, there’s been a serious outbreak of Covid-19 among workers at the world’s biggest manufacturer of medical gloves. The company, Top Glove, which supplies the NHS, was the subject of an investigation by this programme in June. We revealed shocking evidence about working and living conditions which put the migrant workforce…

We spoke to the Conservative MP David Simmonds – and began by asking if he thought the government needed to do better.

Dame Louise Casey led the scheme to arrange temporary accommodation for thousands of rough sleepers at the start of the pandemic. Now, with most of the country likely to face Covid restrictions for many more months, she says the government must “resurrect a sense of kindness and giving” to help people struggling in the “tough…

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard is chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

One area going into Tier 3 is Kent. Case rates there vary widely – Swale and Thanet have the two highest rates in the UK, whilst other areas are below average. But the government decided to put the whole county into the highest level of restrictions, ignoring pleas from MPs for more localised measures. So…

Both the health secretary and the prime minister praised Liverpool for getting its case rate down. The city entered lockdown under Tier 3, but will exit it in Tier 2. For most places in the north of England though, it was a different story. Tier 3 beckons for much of the region, including Greater Manchester.