Portrait of the week: BBC drops songs, museum drops Sloane, and KFC and John Lewis drop slogans

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Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, made pupils wear face-coverings in school corridors. It didn’t take long for the UK government to follow suit in England, for secondary pupils in areas of high transmission. The chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales said that the fatality rate for those aged five to 14 infected with coronavirus was 14 per million, lower than for most seasonal flu infections. Sally Collier resigned as chief regulator of Ofqual, which had been caught up in the chaotic assessment of A-level and GCSE candidates. It was ‘vitally important’ for children to go back to school, said Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. He, Carrie Symonds, their baby Wilfred and dog Dilyn broke off a holiday at a cottage in Applecross in the Scottish Highlands after photographs were published.

At the beginning of the week, Sunday 23 August, total deaths from Covid-19 stood at 41,423; a week earlier the running total had been 41,361. One in eight patients who had received hospital treatment for coronavirus had caught it in hospital, according to a study by King’s College, London. The government gave powers to local authorities to restrict freedoms in areas such as Birmingham, under a statutory instrument, the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 3) Regulations 2020, drawing on public health acts from 1984 and 2010. Harry Maguire, the captain of Manchester United, was given a suspended sentence of 21 months by a Greek court on charges of assault and attempting to bribe police after an altercation on Mykonos when his sister was said to have been injected by a group of Albanians and lost consciousness; he will appeal but was dropped from the England squad. On the fifth day of the final Test against Pakistan, James Anderson became the first fast bowler to take 600 Test wickets.