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Today's FT leads with Andrew Bailey's corroboration of the OBR's forecast that the UK's GDP will decline by 35% in Q2 compared to the start of the year. "I don't think there is anything implausible about a second quarter number of that nature," he said yesterday. But the Governor of the Bank of England was even more pessimistic than the OBR, questioning whether the economy would return to its pre-lockdown output by the end of the year. The BoE is planning to publish its own forecast in early May and is looking at real-time indicators showing big falls in output for many sectors, soaring universal credit claims and higher-than-expected use of the Government's furlough scheme in the private sector. Several of the papers have covered Professor Anthony Costello's claim, when giving evidence to the House of Commons Health Select Committee yesterday, that the COVID-19 death toll could be as high as 40,000 – and that is just in the first wave of infections. In an interview in the Telegraph, he said that if the Government is still pursuing a "herd immunity" strategy (if only!) it won't be able to achieve that without eight to 10 more waves of infections, which will mean tens of thousands more deaths. He based this, in part, on a recent serological study carried out in ...
