Portrait of the week: Employment falls, exam failures and a roundabout rigmarole

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In fine weather with calm seas, 565 migrants in four days crossed the Channel in small craft. French officials said that 33 migrants in two boats that got into difficulty had been returned to Calais. In July more than 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, appointed Dan O’Mahoney as Britain’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, tasked with somehow making such voyages ‘unviable’. Employment fell by 220,000 in the three months to June, the biggest quarterly fall since 2009, but unemployment remained at about 3.9 per cent, as millions stayed on the furlough scheme.

At the beginning of the week, Sunday 9 August, total deaths from Covid-19 stood at 46,566, with a seven-day average of 53 deaths a day. Figures for England included all who had ever been suspected of Covid-19; those in Scotland were limited to those who had been diagnosed within 28 days of death. The test and trace programme was reorganised with 6,000 fewer telephone operatives and more local agents. Belgium, the Bahamas and Andorra were suddenly added to the countries from which anyone entering Britain would have to undergo 14 days’ quarantine; eyes were then on France. Preston had restrictions imposed after 61 new cases were detected in the seven days to 4 August, 28 of them said to be among people aged under 30. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said that ‘now that we know enough to reopen schools to all pupils safely, we have a moral duty to do so’ in September. A concentric triple roundabout in Cambridge for cars, bicycles and pedestrians was closed shortly after its opening when a driver hit a Belisha beacon and drove off.

Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, apologised about school examination results because the Scottish government ‘did not get it right’ when 75,000 pupils (unable to sit exams because of the coronavirus outbreak) saw their estimated mark downgraded; then the government upgraded them again.