UK coronavirus: Johnson hails 'breakthrough' of cheap steroid that helps prevent Covid-19 deaths — as it happened

PM leads daily briefing; former PMs condemn merger of FCO and DfID; Johnson makes U-turn on free school meals after Rashford campaign

Here are the main points from Boris Johnson’s press conference.

In ventilated patients with Covid-19, the drug dexamethosone - so 10 days of treatment with that, which is a tablet or injection - reduces the risk of death by about 35%. In patients on the ward who require oxygen and have covid, it reduces the risk of death by about 20% - that covers about 75% of patients in hospital who will see a mortality benefit from using this drug.

I talked to Marcus Rashford today to congratulate him on his campaigning, which to be honest I only became aware of very recently – today. I thank him for what he has done. I think he is right to draw attention to this issue, and basically we’ve got large numbers of kids who haven’t been able to get back into school.

We’re getting there ... I know people are very, very patient about this, we’re making as much progress on that as we can. Watch this space, because we absolutely hear you.

We are now starting to see – with drugs like dexamethasone and the idea that perhaps you could combine that with other things – we are seeing the first chink of light, which I was perhaps a bit dubious about.

We are seeing the first chink of light and the hope that there will be preparations, treatments – there already are – that could make a big difference to mortality rates, and we are making big investments in vaccines.

Boris Johnson struggling to keep his natural ebullience in check today: not sure "we flattened the sombrero," is the best way of describing the past grim twelve weeks.

This is a fantastic opportunity for this country to make the most of our enormous influence abroad and maximise the UK’s projection by merging DfId and the FCO.

Frankly, I think it is extraordinary we haven’t done it earlier – we have 28 out of 29 OECD countries doing it this way.

The DFiD move is the Cummings camp in the raw, and is only the start. There will be a march through and reshaping of the UK’s institutions, including the BBC. The only things that will stop them are events or incompetence. This has been a project formulated over years.

in truth, none of it’s been hidden. It’s been there on blogs, in comment and leader columns of the Telegraph, in papers from right-wing think tanks. It’s a rebalancing of the civic and cultural space where the Left won while the Tories won on economics

I never normally comment about these sorts of things but it’s all fine so far ... All doing well.

According to the Health Service Journal, the 2 million-plus people who are shielding, and who have been told not to leave home because they are deemed extremely clinically vulnerable, will find the rules for them relaxed from the end of July.

BREAKING: shielding programme for high risk patients to be dropped at end of July. Fears of unemployment, huge anxiety and mass confusion on what people are meant to be do could result if government does not implement the change wellhttps://t.co/kt1U8jy5Sj pic.twitter.com/WiywmNJ88c

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