Portrait of the week: Coronavirus hits cabinet, EasyJet grounded and postman soldiers on

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Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, contracted the coronavirus disease Covid-19, as did Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary. The Prince of Wales had earlier been tested in Scotland and isolated himself with the disease for a week. Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, also isolated himself after suffering symptoms, as did Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief strategist. By Sunday 29 March, 1,228 people in the United Kingdom had died of the disease, compared with a total of 281 a week before. Two days later the total was 1,789. Two more temporary hospitals, in Birmingham and Manchester, in addition to the Nightingale Hospital in the London docks, were being built. Restrictions might last six months. ‘We will not hesitate to go further if that is what the scientific and medical advice tells us we must do,’ the Prime Minister said menacingly in a letter to 30 million households. Testing went on slowly. The first case was found in Orkney. A postman in West Boldon, Co Durham, dressed as an ancient Greek soldier for his round, with a hobby-horse head on his mail-trolley.

More than 750,000 people responded to an appeal for volunteers to help the NHS and to deliver food and medicine to 1.5 million vulnerable people who had been told to stay at home. The NHS began to test staff to see if they had the disease, with a drive-through facility at the Chessington World of Adventures zoo and theme-park. Ocado, the online shopping delivery service, bought 100,000 testing kits for its employees. Some police tried to stop the sale of Easter eggs. Derbyshire police posted footage taken by a drone in criticism of a couple going for a walk in the empty Peak District. The government then issued guidance on exercise telling people to ‘use open spaces near to your home where possible’.