The internet giant said engineers from its drone and hardware divisions had been tasked with developing the product.

At first, it will sell them to healthcare professionals, before making them available to all Amazon customers.

Amazon is not the first major US firm to use its resources to produce personal protective equipment (PPE).

Apple began sending face shields to hospitals in March. Space X, HP and Ford also used their manufacturing resources to make and donate face shields and other types of protective equipment.

Amazon said that it had donated 10,000 face shields in the US and was “on track” to deliver a further 20,000.

But its plan to sell them at low prices on its website will make them available to the general public, something other firms have not done.

A look on Amazon’s marketplace on Thursday showed face shields sold by independent sellers were priced between $12 (£9.80) and $35.

Once Amazon makes its mask available to all its customers, it could drive the price down significantly.

The online retail giant has faced criticism for undercutting the prices of independent retailers on its sites, but anti-trust experts say its efforts to help in this crisis will likely offset those concerns.

“People who are concerned about Amazon’s predatory behaviour might be concert but more people will be happy Amazon is making sure these are lower cost at a time of crisis,” said Michael Kades, director of markets and competition at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Amazon’s design

The company said it based its designs on a face shield developed by a community of 3D printing enthusiasts in Washington.

After making some changes, its designs had been approved by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Image copyright Amazon
Image caption 3D printed headbands designed to work with face shields that will be distributed to healthcare professionals

Engineers from Amazon’s drone division specialising in hardware design created a new design within a week that improved the quality of the materials to allow them to be reusable and added an enhanced snap feature to keep the shield in-place to make them safer.

The engineers also amended the geometry of the shields to reduce sharp edges that could snag clothing or hair, thinned the forehead band to reduce pressure on a person’s forehead, and drastically improved print time making them quicker to manufacture.

Amazon’s Brad Porter wrote in a blog post: “Because of the design innovations and the capabilities of our supply chain, we are confident we will be able to list them at a significantly lower price - almost a third of the cost - than all other reusable face shields currently available to frontline workers.”

The internet giant is also making its designs - known as the origami design and brimmed design - open source so that the shields could be 3D printed by anyone.

Both the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the British Standards Institution (BSI) have warned that homemade and 3D printed face shields do not always protect healthcare workers’ faces from exposure to the coronavirus.

But the global shortage of PPE has led to an increasing number of frontline medical workers crafting homemade equipment.

Amazon did not say whether it would provide the masks to workers at its warehouse who have reported a lack of safety equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.

• LOCKDOWN UPDATE: What’s changing, where?

• SCHOOLS: When will children be returning?

• EXERCISE: What are the guidelines on getting out?

• THE R NUMBER: What it means and why it matters
  LOOK-UP TOOL: How many cases in your area?

In a tiny number of children it can cause serious complications, with some needing intensive care.

Up to 100 children in the UK have been affected and studies suggest the same reaction is being seen in children elsewhere in Europe.

It is likely to be caused by a delayed immune response to the virus which looks like Kawasaki disease.

In April, NHS doctors were told to look out for a rare but dangerous reaction in children.

This was prompted by eight children becoming ill in London, including a 14-year-old who died.

They all had similar symptoms when they were admitted to Evelina London Children’s Hospital, including a high fever, rash, red eyes, swelling and general pain.

Most of the children had no major lung or breathing problems, although seven were put on a ventilator to help improve heart and circulation issues.

Doctors are describing it as a “new phenomenon” similar to Kawasaki disease shock syndrome - a rare condition that mainly affects children under the age of five. Symptoms include a rash, swollen glands in the neck and dry and cracked lips.

But this new syndrome is also affecting older children up to the age of 16, with a minority experiencing serious complications.

Coronavirus: 'My son had symptoms of rare syndrome'

Dr Liz Whittaker, clinical lecturer in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology, at Imperial College London, said the fact that the syndrome was occurring in the middle of a pandemic, suggests the two are linked.

“You’ve got the Covid-19 peak, and then three or four weeks later we’re seeing a peak in this new phenomenon which makes us think that it’s a post-infectious phenomenon,” she said.

This means it is likely to be something related to the build up of antibodies after infection.
‘Exceptionally rare’

Prof Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the majority of children who have had the condition have responded to treatment and are getting better and starting to go home.

The syndrome is “exceptionally rare”, he said.

“This shouldn’t stop parents letting their children exit lockdown,” Prof Viner added.

He said understanding more about the inflammatory disease “might explain why some children become very ill with Covid-19, while the majority are unaffected or asymptomatic”.

Children are thought to make up just 1-2% of all cases of coronavirus infection, accounting for less than 500 admissions to hospital.

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A SIMPLE GUIDE: What are the symptoms?

Michael Levin, professor of paediatrics and international child health at Imperial, explained that most of the children tested negative for coronavirus, but tested positive for detection of antibodies.

“So we really think that the biology of the disease, somehow involves an unusual immune response to the virus,” he said.

However Prof Levin said there was “a vast amount to learn” about the reaction, which had only been known about for two to three weeks.

Children appear to be affected up to six weeks after they have been infected with the virus, which could explain the appearance of the new syndrome several weeks after the peak of UK cases.
What is the situation elsewhere in the world?

There have been similar cases in the US, Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands.

At least 15 US states are looking into the rare condition, according to New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Out of 82 diagnosed cases of the inflammatory syndrome in New York, 53 children tested positive or had antibodies for Covid-19.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the US is set to issue an alert and updated definition of the syndrome to healthcare providers this week.

Meanwhile, according to a study by doctors in northern Italy, 10 children have been affected by the disease.

All 10 of the children in the study were admitted to a hospital in Bergamo - the city at the centre of the worst outbreak in Italy - between mid-February and mid-April, and recovered.

The children, who had an average age of seven, tended to have severe symptoms such as heart complications and signs of toxic shock syndrome. They also needed additional treatment with steroids.

In antibody tests on the children, eight appeared to have already had the coronavirus while the other two had not. But the researchers said the tests were not 100% accurate. Swab tests to detect the virus are not thought to be useful because the reaction tends to occur many weeks after infection.

Dr Lucio Verdoni, report author and doctor at the Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo, said: “Although this complication remains very rare, our study provides further evidence on how the virus may be affecting children.”

Child health experts in the UK say it may not be something which just affects children.

They are now working with researchers in the US and across Europe to find out more about what they have called paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome or (PIMS-TS).

That puts it at odds with the NHS app, which instead relies on users self-diagnosing via an on-screen questionnaire.

UK health chiefs have said the questionnaire is a key reason they are pursuing a “centralised” design despite privacy campaigners’ protests.

Germany ditched that model in April.

And on Wednesday Chancellor Angela Merkel said there would be a “much higher level of acceptance” for a decentralised approach, which is designed to offer a higher degree of anonymity.
Image copyright EPA
Image caption Germany’s chancellor believes a decentralised app will be more popular

Automated contact tracing uses smartphones to register when their owners are in close proximity for significant amounts of time.

If someone is later found to have the virus, a warning can be sent to others they may have infected, telling them to get tested themselves and possibly go into quarantine.

In the centralised model, the contact-matching happens on a remote computer server.

And the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has said this will enable it to catch attackers trying to abuse the self-diagnosis system.

By contrast, the decentralised version carries out the process on the phones themselves.

And there is no central database that could be used to re-identify individuals and reveal with whom they had had spent time.

BBC News technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said: "The NHS is taking a big gamble in choosing to alert app users when they have been in contact with someone who has merely reported symptoms.

“It could make the app fast and effective - or it could mean users become exasperated by a blizzard of false alarms.”

Ms Merkel said SAP and Deutsche Telekom - which are co-developing Germany’s app - were waiting for Google and Apple to release a software interface before they could complete their work.

And BBC News has learned the two US technology companies plan to release the finished version of their API (application programming interface) as soon as Thursday.
False alerts

Details of Germany’s Corona-Warn-App published on the code-sharing site Github say it depends solely on medical test results to “avoid misuse”.
Media captionWatch: What is contact tracing and how does it work?

Those who test positive will be given a verification code that must be entered into the app before it anonymously flags them as being a risk to others.

Germany has led the way in testing in Europe and currently has capacity to analyse about 838,000 samples per week.

The UK is catching up - but scientists advising the NHS say they can save more lives by also drawing on self-diagnosis data.

“Speed is of the essence,” Prof Christophe Fraser, of the Oxford Big Data Institute, said last week.

It can take several days to obtain Covid-19 test results.

And self-reported symptoms can be acted on instantly.

But an ethics advisory board advising Health Secretary Matt Hancock on the app has warned too many resulting “false positive alerts could undermine trust in the app and cause undue stress to users”.

LOCKDOWN UPDATE: What's changing, where?
SCHOOLS: When will children be returning?
EXERCISE: What are the guidelines on getting out?
THE R NUMBER: What it means and why it matters
AIR TRAVELLERS: The new quarantine rules
LOOK-UP TOOL: How many cases in your area?
GLOBAL SPREAD: Tracking the pandemic
RECOVERY: How long does it take to get better?
A SIMPLE GUIDE: What are the symptoms?

The NHS is currently trialling its app on the Isle of Wight.

There have been reports of some suspected false alerts.

But a Department of Health spokeswoman said this had been expected.

“In a matter of days, more than 50,000 people have downloaded the app with overwhelmingly positive feedback,” she told BBC News.

“But as with all new technologies, there will be issues that need to be resolved in how it works, which is why it is being trialled before a national rollout.”

The NHS is also exploring use of the Apple-Google API, which would entail a switch to the decentralised model.

But it intends to offer users the centralised version first, unless plans to complete the rollout within a fortnight go awry.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption Norway’s data regulator is at odds with the country’s’ National Institute of Public Health about its contact-tracing app

One sticking point could be calls for limits on how the data is used - possibly requiring a new law.

That would avoid the risk of a repeat of the situation in Norway, where the local data protection watchdog has accused the country’s health authority of failing to carry out a proper risk assessment of a centralised contact-tracing app.

In total, the misleading videos had been viewed more than 62 million times.

Among the false claims was the idea that pharmaceutical companies already have a coronavirus vaccine but are refusing to sell it.

YouTube said it was committed to reducing the spread of harmful misinformation.

The researchers suggested “good quality, accurate information” had been uploaded to YouTube by government bodies and health experts.

But it said the videos were often difficult to understand and lacked the popular appeal of YouTube stars and vloggers.

The study, published online by BMJ Global Health, looked at the most widely viewed coronavirus-related videos in English, as of 21 March.

After excluding duplicate videos, videos longer than an hour and videos that did not include relevant audio or visual material, they were left with 69 to analyse.

The videos were scored on whether they presented exclusively factual information about viral spread, coronavirus symptoms, prevention and potential treatments.

Videos from government agencies scored significantly better than other sources, but were less widely viewed.

Of the 19 videos found to include misinformation:

• about a third came from entertainment news sources

• national news outlets accounted for about a quarter

• internet news sources also account for about a quarter

• 13% had been uploaded by independent video-makers

The report recommends that governments and health authorities should collaborate with entertainment news sources and social media influencers to make appealing, factual content that is more widely viewed.

YouTube said in a statement: "We’re committed to providing timely and helpful information at this critical time, including raising authoritative content, reducing the spread of harmful misinformation and showing information panels, using NHS and World Health Organization (WHO) data, to help combat misinformation.

"We have clear policies that prohibit videos promoting medically unsubstantiated methods to prevent the coronavirus in place of seeking medical treatment, and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged to us. Now any content that disputes the existence or transmission of Covid-19, as described by the WHO and the NHS is in violation of YouTube policies. For borderline content that could misinform users in harmful ways, we reduce recommendations.

“We’ll continue to evaluate the impact of these videos on communities around the world.”
Analysis

by Marianna Spring, specialist disinformation and social media reporter

In recent weeks, there has been an increase in highly polished videos promoting conspiracy theories being shared on YouTube - and they prove very popular.

So these findings - although concerning - are not surprising.

The accurate information shared by trusted public health bodies on YouTube tends to be more complex.

It can lack the popular appeal of the conspiracy videos, which give misleading explanations to worried people who are looking for quick answers, or someone to blame.

That includes videos such as Plandemic, which was widely shared online last week.

High-quality production values and interviews with supposed experts can make these videos very convincing. Often facts will be presented out of context and used to draw false conclusions.

And tackling this kind of content is a game of cat-and-mouse for social media sites.

Once videos gain traction, even if they are removed, they continue to be uploaded repeatedly by other users.

It is not just alternative outlets uploading misinformation either. Whether for views or clicks, the study suggests some mainstream media outlets are also guilty of spreading misleading information.

It’s a particularly big problem for workers in the UK’s largest cities.

One recent report warned that maintaining a 2m (6ft 6in) distance between Tube passengers in London, for example, would reduce its capacity to 15% of normal levels, and buses to 12%.

But if more people take to the streets, will the road network cope?

“If in big cities we are to have a radical shift to bicycles, scooters, other ways of getting about, that would require a sudden and radical change in road use,” said Prof Tony Travers from the London School of Economics.

“You have to move people quickly through streets and the easiest place to do that is main roads. But they are used by buses, taxis, delivery vehicles and other essential vehicles. Changing road use doesn’t happen quickly.”

The use of public transport would also need to be staggered, with “rush hour peaks” lasting perhaps for five-hour stretches, and spaces being allocated, Prof Travers suggested.

Previous experience suggests this would not be an easy change to bring about.

“Public transport operators have spent decades trying to get users to spread the rush hour,” he said.

“It would be hard to do this voluntarily. You would have to have some degree of people, in effect, being allocated slots.”

It would also have knock-on consequences for other aspects of daily life.

“Will cafes, bars and restaurants need relaxed licensing laws so they can be open for longer? How about parents with children who need to collect them from school?” he said.

“It has profound implications for how businesses work.”

So - what is the best alternative?
Electric scooters

They’re largely banned on UK public roads and pavements, but e-scooter sales have doubled year-on-year for Somerset-based retailer Pure Electric.

It sold 135 e-scooters in a single day last week, and 11,500 last year.

“Electrification is coming - it’s a low cost, low impact transport,” says chief executive Adam Norris. His firm also sells e-bikes.

Mr Norris’s UK-wide best-selling e-scooter is the M365 from Chinese budget brand Xiaomi.

They have a speed cap of 15km/h (10mph) and he suggests they’re ideal for journeys of around two to four miles, with e-bikes taking a slightly longer haul.

E-scooters are a common sight in many cities around the world including Paris and LA but officially in the UK they are only allowed on private land.
Image copyright Pure Electric
Image caption Adam Norris says e-scooter sales have doubled year-on-year

The government was planning a public consultation prior to the pandemic but campaigners have long warned of the dangers to both pedestrians and riders.

In 2019 TV presenter Emily Hartridge, 35, was riding an electric scooter when she was killed in a collision with a lorry in south London.

However, Mr Norris thinks a change in the law is “logical” following the rise in consumer demand, and he believes that with sensible precautions such as high-vis clothing and newer models with larger wheels to tackle potholes, safety can be improved.

“Safety is important,” he said. “But if they limit all e-scooters to the same speed as electric bikes, what’s the difference?”

Analyst Carolina Milanesi, from Creative Futures, thinks even with the right legislation in place, people may be less likely to want to hire electric vehicles, a service offered by firms like Lime and Bird.

“I am not sure if e-bikes and scooters are necessarily the way people will go unless they invest in them themselves, rather than using hire services which would require them to clean them when they get them,” she said.
Take your own car

Anthony Eskinazi runs the platform Just Park, which lets people offer their parking spaces up for rent. He says the firm is considering turning its own 300 car parks into storage for scooters and bikes.
Image copyright Getty Images

He believes “the balance between congestion and convenience” may mean car owners won’t want to use individual vehicles for very long once traffic builds up.

“I think parking demand will surge after lockdown but it won’t be sustainable,” he said.

“People want a real alternative now. If the government can facilitate it we will see a boom in micro-mobility.”
Get a cab

By its own admission, lockdown has proved to be a challenging time for Uber, which says it is now “preparing for the next phase of recovery”.
Image copyright Getty Images

It is supplying PPE gloves and masks to all its drivers and is considering calls to pay them a small fee if they take time out between passengers to clean their vehicle interiors.

“I do wonder what the impact on Lyft and Uber will be,” said Carolina Milanesi.

“What will these companies have to disclose to grow trust that the driver or the passenger is safe?”

Uber might adapt a newly launched driver ID tool to ask drivers to upload selfies to prove they are wearing masks at work, it said.

The firm is also developing its own driverless car - but it was only allowed back on the roads in California two months ago following a fatal crash in 2018.
Drone taxis

If all else fails, how about a flying taxi?
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption The Volocopter is one of hundreds of eVTOL aircraft under development

You might have problems hailing one. There are 175 drone taxi designs floating around (sorry) but as yet no regular service in any one country.

“I have been watching empty buses drive past for the last few weeks, and every time I think of how great it would be to provide small-scale public transport with robot taxis,” says Dr Steve Wright, associate professor in aerospace engineering at the University of the West of England.

"I really want these taxis to be flying ones too, but I think I am going to have to wait, as the coronavirus is probably going to hinder the Evtol [vertical take off and landing] revolution more than encourage it.

“The meltdown going on in the airlines is probably going to drag down the whole aviation industry.”

Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said the US government had warned medical research organisations of the risks.

But he would not say whether there had been confirmed cases of stolen data.

UK security sources says they have also seen similar activity.
Warp speed

An international race is on to find a vaccine for Covid-19.

Researchers, companies and governments are all involved. And their efforts are simultaneously being protected by domestic spy agencies, while being targeted by foreign ones.

Mr Evanina’s organisation provides advice on countering the work of foreign intelligence agencies to the US government, businesses and academia.

“We have been working with our industry and government folk here very closely to ensure they are protecting all the research and data as best they can,” he said.

“We have every expectation that foreign intelligence services, to include the Chinese Communist Party, will attempt to obtain what we are making here.”

The US government is trying to aid work on a vaccine with a programme reportedly called Operation Warp Speed.

Whichever country discovers the first effective and safe formulation may be able to ensure its citizens are first to benefit.

“We’ve been in contact with every medical research organisation that is doing the research to be very, very vigilant,” Mr Evanina added.

“In today’s world there is nothing more valuable or worth stealing than any kind of biomedical research that is going to help with a coronavirus vaccine.”
Hospital attacks

In mid-April, an FBI official said there had been “some intrusions” into institutions working on Covid-related research.

Deputy assistant director Tonya Ugoretz said bio-medical data had long been “a priority target for cyber-espionage” and organisations publicly linked to work on the virus had become a “mark”.

Later in the month, the US assistant attorney general for national security, John Demers, said it would be “beyond absurd” to think China would not be interested in such details.

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Canada’s Centre for Cyber Security warned in March that “sophisticated threat actors may attempt to steal the intellectual property of organisations engaged in research and development related to Covid-19.”

US and Western spies are also likely to be interested in what is going on inside China, including any discrepancies over the death toll from Covid-19 as well as its research on vaccines and treatments.

There have also been ongoing concerns about the risks of cyber-attacks against health organisations, which could undermine their ability to respond to the outbreak.

Two hospitals in the Czech Republic reported experiencing cyber-attacks in April. This led to an unusual request from the US Secretary of State.

“We call upon the actor in question to refrain from carrying out disruptive malicious cyber-activity against the Czech Republic’s healthcare system or similar infrastructure elsewhere,” Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

“Eventually, these scum will release something truly nasty to wipe us all out, but first they have to train us to be obedient slaves” reads another.

A third: “Coronavirus is the newest Islamist weapon.”

Many of us by now will have seen something of the “infodemic” the World Health Organization (WHO) warned is swirling across society.

Whether popping into your online timeline or maybe forwarded by a relative, it would have been a rumour or revelation so eye-grabbing, so shockingly different from the norm, that they’re hard to ignore.
Image copyright Facebook

Yet while false claims about coronavirus have been hard to miss, the interests and ideologies underneath them have been far less visible.

Now, a co-investigation by BBC Click and the UK counter-extremism think-tank Institute of Strategic Dialogue, indicates how both extremist political and fringe medical communities have tried to exploit the pandemic online.
Blaming immigration

Chloe Colliver led the study: “We started doing this research because we were interested to look at the intersection of extremism and disinformation online,” she explained.

“We wanted to know how the coronavirus crisis was affecting those trends.”

First, researchers collected about 150,000 public Facebook posts sent by 38 far-right groups and pages since January.

They used keywords to spot the key themes of each post, and then algorithms to map what each group tended to speak about overall.

Researchers identified five communities, united by the topic of discussion:

• Immigration

• Islam

• Judaism

• LGBT

• Elites

The numbers, probably indicative rather than giving the full picture, show that for the first four of these, the scale of activity hadn’t increased in volume since the lockdown.

But while there weren’t more posts about immigration, for example, discussions about the topic had increasingly linked it to Covid-19.

It’s the same for the theme of Islam - the scale was constant, but more and more of the discussion had begun to explicitly link the virus to Muslims, claiming they were exempt from the lockdown, blaming them for its spread, and even hoping they would catch it.

But the fifth and largest community - the one concerning the “elites” - had shown a significant spike in activity during the lockdown.

Discussions included the relationship of these “elites” - like Jeff Bezos, the Rothschilds, George Soros and Bill Gates - to the “deep state”, and their alleged role in causing the pandemic.

The researchers discovered that along with tying it to “elites”, this community was more likely than any other to think the virus was engineered, over-hyped, or had an existing cure.
Image caption Disinformation has also been spread outside Facebook in chat rooms

“This was the big shift,” Colliver explained.

“Anti-elite conversations have escalated dramatically, especially driving home the idea the lockdown is a tool of social control.”
‘Humungous scale’

As they dug deeper into the posts, the researchers took note of many thousands of links directing users to fringe political and health websites.

Newsguard, a website-rating organisation, had identified 34 of them as having shared information about the coronavirus that was “materially false”.

“The key interests behind these websites were either fringe politics or fringe health, sometimes both wrapped up together” Ms Colliver continued.

What was surprising to the researchers, however, was the size: “The scale was humungous”.
Image copyright Facebook

They counted the total number of “interactions” - likes, shares, comments, and so on - which each public post on Facebook had received which contained a link to any of these 34 sites.

Over the same time period:

• the WHO’s website received 6.2 million interactions

• the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), received 6.4 million

• TheEpochTimes.com, a news site whose advertising was banned by Facebook, and which was accused of covert inauthentic activity by both Facebook and Twitter last year, received more than 48 million interactions

The 34 websites together received more than 80 million interactions.

These included:

• almost 150,000 interactions for HumansAreFree.com, which made claims that the “plandemic” had been prepared years before the outbreak

• about 1.7 million interactions for RealFarmacy.com, which falsely claims that personal ultraviolet lamps are a safe remedy for coronavirus

“Interactions” do not imply agreement, and they were counted for each website overall, not exclusively for misinformation regarding coronavirus.

“We have removed a number of links shared by BBC Click for violating our policies on hate speech and the spread of harmful misinformation,” Facebook said in response to the study.

“Where a post does not violate our policies but is deemed by third party fact-checkers to be false, we reduce its distribution and show warning labels marking the post as false. When people see these warning labels, 95% of the time they do not go on to view the original content,” it said.
Growing threat

There are also plenty of other ways for the CDC and WHO to get their information out to audiences.

Recent research by the UK watchdog Ofcom suggests that most people learn about the virus from mainstream sources.

However, what the WHO has called an “infodemic” looks more like a parallel world, complete with social organisation, activism and gift shops.

It is one where fringe politics and fringe health have begun to mix. They both carry the idea that the lockdown isn’t about safety but about control, which they promise to “liberate” their followers from.

Given its size and energy, it is a world that also may represent a growing threat to the lockdown itself, and the medical and political consensus on which it is grounded.

The Google-owned video clip service acted after repeatedly warning Mr Icke that he had violated its policies by posting misleading information about the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the firm will still allow videos posted by others that feature Mr Icke to remain live, so long as their content does not break its rules.

It follows a similar ban by Facebook.

“YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS,” a spokeswoman told the BBC.

“Due to continued violation of these policies, we have terminated David Icke’s YouTube channel.”

The channel had more than 900,000 subscribers at the time it was removed. The last clip Mr Icke had posted on Friday - about his Facebook ban - had about 120,000 views.

YouTube confirmed Mr Icke would not be allowed to start again by setting up a new channel.
Censorship debate

Last month, a live-streamed interview with Mr Icke posted by another account prompted YouTube to ban all conspiracy theory videos falsely linking coronavirus symptoms to 5G mobile phone networks.

The tech firm subsequently went further by banning any material that:

• suggests coronavirus does not exist

• contains medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice about the virus

• explicitly disputes the efficacy of guidance about social distancing and self-isolation that has been issued by the WHO and/or local health authorities

Some civil rights groups have previously expressed concern about “growing online censorship around the coronavirus pandemic” by the major social networks.

“It is through a free forum of ideas that citizens understand, contextualise and trust information, not through harsh restrictions on information sharing,” they wrote to YouTube on 16 April.

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But the latest move was welcomed by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK-based think tank.

It said that videos of Mr Icke discussing conspiracy theories had been viewed about 30 million times across social media.

“We commend YouTube on bowing to pressure and taking action on David Icke’s channel,” said CCDH’s chief executive Imran Ahmed.

“However, there remains a network of channels and shadowy amplifiers, who promote Mr Icke’s content [and] need to be removed.”

CCDH is now urging Twitter and Facebook’s Instagram to take similar action.

Its head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO’s declaration of the virus as an international health emergency on 30 January gave “enough time for the rest of the world to respond”.

At the time there were only 82 cases outside China and no deaths.

Today there are more than 3.2m cases and 234,000 deaths recorded worldwide.

US President Donald Trump has said the WHO “really blew” its response and accused it of bias towards China.

The US is the global health body’s largest single funder and President Trump says he will halt funding.

Speaking at a news conference on Friday Dr Tedros offered a vigorous defence of how the organisation responded.

He insisted the WHO used the time before the declaration wisely, including visiting China to learn more about the virus at its origin.

Dr Tedros confirmed that the pandemic remained a “public health emergency of international concern”, three months after it was declared one.

Such a declaration is made under an “extraordinary” event and requires a global response.

Dr Tedros described “grave” worries over the potential impact of the virus as it accelerates in countries with weaker health systems.
Media captionThe BBC’s Secunder Kermani and Anne Soy compare how prepared Asian and African countries are

Officials said they had seen worrying increases in a number of these nations - including Haiti, Somalia and Sudan.

The WHO also urged caution among nations relaxing their social distancing measures, stressing the importance of monitoring for new jumps in infections as lockdowns are eased.

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Dr Tedros was also asked again about relations with the United States, insisting the UN agency remained in “constant contact” with the country.

On Thursday President Trump appeared to undercut his own intelligence agencies by suggesting he had seen evidence coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory.
Media captionWATCH: ‘One of two things happened’

The WHO’s head of emergencies, Dr Michael Ryan, addressed the claim on Friday.

“With regard to the origins of the virus in Wuhan we have listened again and again to numerous scientists who’ve looked at the (genetic) sequences, looked at this virus, and we are assured that this virus is natural in origin,” he said.

• Is there any evidence for coronavirus lab release idea?

*Dr Ryan also added that it was “important” to learn more about the animal host and understand how the virus jumped from animals to humans.

• China has rejected the lab theory and criticised the US response to Covid-19.
  Media caption’World is too fragile,’ says head of UN

• In other developments around the world:

• The world’s largest virus lockdown, in India, has been extended another two weeks

• The United Nations has warned that millions of children risk missing out on vaccines because of pandemic disruption
  May Day rallies have been taking place globally, but in scaled back or socially-distanced form
  Ten US states have begun partially reopening
  The UK government says it has met a target on testing; the opposition has called the figures misleading

Two volunteers were injected, the primary of quite 800 people recruited for the study.

Half will receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and half an impact vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus.

The design of the trial means volunteers won’t know which vaccine they’re getting, though doctors will.

Elisa Granato, one among the 2 who received the jab, told the BBC: “I’m a scientist, so I wanted to undertake to support the scientific process wherever I can.”

The vaccine was developed in under three months by a team at Oxford University . Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute, led the pre-clinical research.

“Personally I even have a high degree of confidence during this vaccine,” she said.

“Of course, we’ve to check it and obtain data from humans. we’ve to demonstrate it actually works and stops people getting infected with coronavirus before using the vaccine within the wider population.”

Prof Gilbert previously said she was “80% confident” the vaccine would work, but now prefers to not put a figure thereon , saying simply she is “very optimistic” about its chances.
So how does the vaccine work?

The vaccine is formed from a weakened version of a standard cold virus (known as an adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been modified so it cannot grow in humans.

The Oxford team has already developed a vaccine against Mers, another sort of coronavirus, using an equivalent approach - which had promising leads to clinical trials.
Image caption Fergus holding a vial of the vaccine developed by the Oxford team
How will they know if it works?

The only way the team will know if the Covid-19 vaccine works is by comparing the amount of individuals who get infected with coronavirus within the months ahead from the 2 arms of the trial.

That could be a drag if cases fall rapidly within the UK, because there might not be enough data.

Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, who is leading the trial, said: “We’re chasing the top of this current epidemic wave. If we do not catch that, we cannot be ready to tell whether the vaccine works within the next few months. But we do expect that there’ll be more cases within the future because this virus hasn’t gone away.”

The vaccine researchers are prioritising the recruitment of local healthcare workers into the trial as they’re more likely than others to be exposed to the virus.

A larger trial, of about 5,000 volunteers, will start within the coming months and can haven’t any regulation .

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Older people tend to possess weaker immune responses to vaccines. Researchers are evaluating whether or not they might need two doses of the jab.

The Oxford team is additionally working with researchers in Kenya a few possible vaccine trial there, where the rates of transmission are growing from a lower base.

If the numbers might be a drag , why not deliberately infect volunteers with coronavirus?

That would be a fast and certain thanks to determine if the vaccine was effective, but it might be ethically questionable because there are not any proven treatments for Covid-19.

But which may be possible within the future. Prof Pollard said: “If we reach the purpose where we had some treatments for the disease and that we could guarantee the security of volunteers, that might be a really great way of testing a vaccine.”
Is it safe?

The trial volunteers are going to be carefully monitored within the coming months. they need been told that some may get a sore arm, headaches or fevers within the first few days after vaccination.

They are also told there’s a theoretical risk that the virus could induce a significant reaction to coronavirus, which arose in some early Sars animal vaccine studies.
Image copyright Sean Elias - Oxford Vaccine trial
Image caption Work began on a vaccine in January

But the Oxford team says its data suggests the danger of the vaccine producing an enhanced disease is minimal, and data from animal studies has been positive.

Scientists there hope to possess a million doses ready by September, and to dramatically proportion manufacturing then , should the vaccine prove effective.
So who would catch on first?

Prof Gilbert says that has not been decided yet: “It’s not really our role to dictate what is going to happen, we just need to attempt to get a vaccine that works and have enough of it then it’ll be for others to make a decision .”

Prof Pollard added: “We’ve need to ensure we’ve enough doses to supply for those in greatest need, not just within the UK but also in developing countries.”
Media captionCoronavirus: what’s a vaccine and the way is one made?

Another team at Imperial College London hopes to start human trials of its coronavirus vaccine in June.

The Oxford and Imperial teams have received quite £40m of state funding.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has praised both teams and said the united kingdom will “throw everything we’ve got” at developing a vaccine.

UK chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty has said neither a vaccine, nor a drug to treat Covid-19, is probably going to be available within subsequent year.

Many of these have gone to hospitals, where the XR-1 provides information to patients and helps guide visitors to the proper department.

The artificial intelligence (AI) incorporated into the machines means they will operate their own. They are also connected to the newest 5G mobile networks, which suggests they will react very quickly.

“The fast speeds and wide reach of 5G networks make them ideal for XR-1, which interacts by talking, gesturing, dancing and physically guiding people,” says CloudMinds president Karl Zhao.

According to Wuhan Wuchang military hospital dean Wan Jun, they need been helpful. “CloudMinds robots’ contactless operation and reliability supported the sector hospital through a difficult time,” he says.

A few dozen robots isn’t getting to make an enormous dent within the coronavirus outbreak, but it might be a symbol of what is coming.

Artificial intelligence has made big progress in tasks like processing speech, which is making digital helpers more and more useful.

Dr Anita Montes, an obstetrician-gynaecologist based in North Carolina, says voice-enabled app Suki saves her “hours and hours a day” writing notes.
Image copyright Anita Montes
Image caption Dr Montes uses a digital assistant to require notes

“Proper charting is significant to good patient care,” she says.

She thinks the service could be helpful for doctors who are handling Covid-19 patients as a result: “They might be spending 12 hours seeing patients, then hours more charting them, so any tools which will cut the time it takes are really helpful.”

Until now, most people’s experience of digital assistants has been limited to recreationally focused services like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri.

“Business usage is growing, but the digital assistant market is usually residential at the instant ,” says Blake Kozak, an analyst at global technology researcher Omdia.

But quarantined helpers are turning to AI tools for help.

“We are currently fixing more meetings than we ever have before,” says Dennis Mortensen, chief executive and co-founder of x.ai, an AI meeting scheduling tool that emails participants with potential times.

“The situation is making people address software solutions, and that i doubt they’re going to return once things return to normal.”

That’s excellent news for Microsoft, which recently began removing consumer-facing features like controlling music from its assistant Cortana’s skill set, and concentrating on personal productivity applications like reading emails aloud and scheduling meetings.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Microsoft wants Cortana to be a private productivity tool

“There may be a need for an assistant which will transcend answering questions or setting alarms,” Microsoft said during a statement.

“Our ultimate goal for Cortana is to make an assistant which will assist you revisit time through your day so you’ll specialise in the items that matter most.”

However, for anyone keen to use a digital assistant to lighten their load, Mr Mortensen advises choosing a variety of tools that every do one thing well.

“I don’t expect anybody digital assistant to be ready to do everything, but I do think we’ll see start to ascertain AI agents being employed to try to to very well-defined tasks within subsequent five years,” he says.

“You might need 10 or 11 to try to to all the small jobs you would like doing, but if we will get all of them to speak to every other, they might do truly great things.”

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The robots helping to fight coronavirus

The staff at New York-based AI specialist IPsoft hope that’s the case.

It develops software packages designed to fulfil roles traditionally performed by people, like an IT service desk engineer.

Via its new online marketplace, prospective employers can interview the company’s assistant Amelia to make a decision if they ought to combat a digital employee instead of an individual .

Costing $1,800 (£1,460) a month, their IT troubleshooter can reset passwords, unlock accounts and affect up to 1,000 inquiries a month.

So should humans be worried about these up-and-coming digital rivals?

Not consistent with Chloe Jessamy of admin support and digital marketing company Supportal Business Services in London.
Image copyright Chloe Jessamy, Supportal Business Services
Image caption Chloe Jessamy isn’t concerned about the challenge from digital assistants

Her company supplies services, including PAs and web design, performed by humans, not computers.

“I am not in the least worried about digital assistants,” she says.

“My clients want hands-on support and communication, which needs a person’s touch. There’s only such a lot automation you’ll use.”

Dr Will Venters, professor of data systems at the London School of Economics, supports this view.

“Bots need careful management,” he says

"They won’t question their work, they hold no ethical compass, they can’t easily explain how they received a choice and that they cannot understand the biases they could be applying.

“Further, they work so quickly that the issues they cause can rapidly scale out of control.”

So having a digital helper might cause you to more productive, but it’s worth remembering that they’re not perfect.

Li Zehua broadcast the chase and his detention by police on 26 February, and had not been seen publicly since.

On Wednesday he published a video saying he spent fortnight in “quarantine” in Wuhan, followed by more quarantine in his home town.

He was told the quarantine was needed as he’d been to “sensitive areas”.
Who is Li Zehua?

Li Zehua may be a citizen journalist who visited Wuhan in February, after another journalist, Chen Qiushi, went missing. In his first video from Wuhan he explained why we was there.

"Before I entered Wuhan, a lover who worked within the Chinese mainstream media told me… all the bad news about the epidemic has been collected by the central government.

“The local media can only report the great news about the patients’ recovery then on. Of course, it remains uncertain whether that’s true, because this is often just what I heard from my friends.”

His stories included an alleged cover-up of infections, and a busy crematorium. They were watched many times on Chinese platforms, YouTube, and Twitter.
What happened on 26 February?

In the new video, Li Zehua, who is assumed to be 25, said he was driving in Wuhan when people in another car told him to prevent .

Instead of stopping, he sped up, saying he was “confused” and in “fear”. He was chased and drove for 30km [19 miles], with a part of the journey uploaded to YouTube with the title “SOS”.

He received his accommodation and commenced live-streaming before “several” people in police or security uniforms knocked on a near-by door.

Why have two reporters in Wuhan disappeared?

He turned off the sunshine and sat silently while the officers knocked on other doors, and eventually his. He ignored them but three hours later they knocked again.

He opened the door and was taken to a police headquarters , where he had fingerprints and blood samples taken, before being taken to an “interrogation room”.

He was told he was “suspected of disturbing public order”, but was told there would be no penalty.

However, because he had been to “sensitive epidemic areas”, he would wish to be quarantined.
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What happened next?

Li Zehua was taken by the captain to quarantine accommodation in Wuhan, where his electronic devices were taken.

He stayed there for 2 weeks, saying he was “safe” and was ready to watch Chinese TV news.

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He was then driven to a quarantine centre in his home town for an additional fortnight , before getting to stick with his family.

“During the entire process, the police enforced law during a civilised manner, ensured my rest time and food. They also cared about me considerably ,” he said.

"After finishing the quarantine, i have been with my family. Now I’m planning for my development during this year.

“I’m grateful to all or any the people that taken care of me and cared about me. I wish all people suffering the epidemic can pull through. God bless China. I wish the planet can unite together.”

Chen Qiushi remains missing, consistent with a Twitter account travel by friends. He has been out of contact for 75 days.

Another journalist who reported from Wuhan, Fang Bin, has also not been heard from since February.