Dr Gail Muflin, NHS Blood and Transplant's medical director and a consultant haemotologist, said the UK planned to start "providing plasma from recovered people to hospitals as treatment" for Covid-19 "in the very near future."

The move was discussed in a video call of senior officials on Thursday. Experts had called for Britain to begin using the treatment following reports on trials in China last month.

Speaking in February Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from Warwick Medical School said: "We should definitely be looking at the using convalescent plasma from recovered patients' in the UK."

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said: "We have been working with the National Blood Service in anticipation of this issue, and in early March, we agreed to this procedure.

"This will mean that patients who are recovering from Covid-19 can receive plasma from another patient who has recovered."

Ministers from across government were seated, ashen faced, in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR). On a large flat screen, epidemiologists from Imperial College London were showing a slide which detailed the scale of the epidemic that was enveloping Britain.

The first cases of the virus had been confirmed in south east Asia two months previously. Britain reported its first cases, imported from returning travellers, a month later. Now there was widespread and sustained domestic transmission and the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared a global pandemic.

But it was not the pandemic itself that was causing those gathered in Whitehall to grimace but the nation’s woeful preparation. The peak of the epidemic had not yet arrived but local resilience forums, hospitals and mortuaries across the country were already being overwhelmed. 

There was not enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for the nation's doctors...

It was 7am when James Fox was dragged from his slumbers by an incessant ringing on the doorbell of his flat in the Taiwanese capital where he was undergoing a 14-day coronavirus quarantine.

Still groggy with sleep, the American university researcher opened the door to find an irate policeman who instantly began to berate him in rapid-fire Chinese. “I had no idea why because I couldn’t understand what he was saying. It was a very frightening experience,” he recalled.

Mr Fox’s mistake had been to switch his mobile phone onto "airplane" mode in order to get a good night’s sleep, unwittingly dropping off the Taiwanese government’s electronic surveillance grid for those being quarantined after arriving from overseas.

The knock at the door came despite Mr Fox receiving two calls a day from a government-assigned social worker to check that he had not developed Covid-19 symptoms after a recent trip to Iceland.

His experience,...

Boris Johnson has warned that "things will get worse before they get better", as the NHS urged against "complacency" over the national effort to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

In a letter being sent to every UK household, the Prime Minister states that the more "we all follow the rules", the fewer lives that will be lost over the coming weeks and "the sooner life can return to normal".

His intervention, after becoming the first world leader to test positive for the disease, came as the death toll of those with Covid-19 rose above 1,000, with 260 additional fatalities taking the total to 1,019. There were fears last night that Britain was following the course of Italy and Spain, with more deaths at this stage of the outbreak than any country other than Spain.

Yesterday, Stephen Powis, the medical director of the NHS said it would be a "good result" if the number of people killed in the UK was below 20,000. But warned that "now is not the time to be...

Dr Gail Muflin, NHS Blood and Transplant's medical director and a consultant haemotologist, said the UK planned to start "providing plasma from recovered people to hospitals as treatment" for Covid-19 "in the very near future."

The move was discussed in a video call of senior officials on Thursday. Experts had called for Britain to begin using the treatment following reports on trials in China last month.

Speaking in February Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from Warwick Medical School said: "We should definitely be looking at the using convalescent plasma from recovered patients' in the UK."

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said: "We have been working with the National Blood Service in anticipation of this issue, and in early March, we agreed to this procedure.

"This will mean that patients who are recovering from Covid-19 can receive plasma from another patient who has recovered."

The NHS failed a major cross-government test of its ability to handle a severe pandemic but the “terrifying” results were kept secret from the public, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Ministers were informed three years ago that Britain would be quickly overwhelmed by a severe outbreak amid a shortage of critical care beds, morgue capacity and personal protective equipment (PPE), an investigation has discovered.

Codenamed Exercise Cygnus, the three-day dry run for a pandemic carried out in October 2016 tested how NHS hospitals and other services would cope in the event of a major flu outbreak with a similar mortality rate to Covid-19.

The report on Cygnus’s findings were deemed too sensitive by Whitehall officials to be made public but the Sunday Telegraph has established that it found:

The NHS could be "overwhelmed" like the Italian health system in just a fortnight, Boris Johnson has warned, as official guidance paved the way for British doctors to prioritise the coronavirus patients who are most likely to survive.

In his starkest warning yet, the Prime Minister said the UK was only "two or three" weeks behind Italy, where the death toll from Covid-19 rose by 793 in 24 hours.

Urging people to heed advice to "stay at home" in order to save "literally thousands of lives", Mr Johnson said: "Unless we act together, unless we make the heroic and collective national effort to slow the spread - then it is all too likely that our own NHS will be similarly overwhelmed."

The extraordinary plea came as the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, Matt Hancock, announced that following a call on Friday for recently retired doctors, nurses and other medical staff 4,000 nurses and 500 doctors had signed up to return to the NHS within the...

The Treasury is poised to take action to delay the “death of cash” ahead of the Budget after an outcry over dwindling access to dispensers for rural communities and older people.

New Chancellor Rishi Sunak is under mounting pressure to protect the widespread availability of cash, but officials are understood to already be in detailed discussions over a remedy as the Budget nears.

One of the options being discussed is imposing laws similar to those recently put in place in Sweden amid warnings that Britain could be cashless within a decade.

An insider said “the officials get it and are working very closely on it”.

A law introduced last month in Sweden, one of the fastest adopters of digital payments, forces banks with a certain amount of deposits to offer cash services.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority has been put in charge of ensuring they offer widespread access across the country and lenders will...

The Government is under pressure to end the 'witch-hunt' against British veterans after a soldier who was being investigated over his actions in Northern Ireland took his own life.

The veteran, named by friends as Eddie ‘Spud’ Murphy, was found dead by his wife last Thursday following an investigation into his service during the Troubles.

Friends fear the pressure he felt at being investigated over historic allegations may have contributed to the tragedy.

The Government has promised to protect veterans from prosecution, but there has been concern over the length of time being taken to introduce any measures to safeguard them.

Six British Army veterans are currently facing the prospect of being prosecuted in the Northern Ireland courts.

Mr Murphy is understood to have served with the 1st Battalion, Royal Highland Fusiliers, in Northern Ireland, where he survived at least one bomb attack by the IRA.

Boris Johnson wants to replace a series of mandarins as part of a move to change dramatically the approach in some of Whitehall’s most influential departments, Tory sources claim.

Senior Tories said No 10 sees Sir Tom Scholar, the Treasury permanent secretary, who previously led David Cameron’s attempted renegotiations with the EU,  as “offside” on Brexit and his approach to the economy.

Sir Tom is said to top a “s---list” of permanent secretaries No?10 wants replaced over claims that they are significantly at odds with Tory ministers and advisers, who have been buoyed by Mr Johnson’s landslide election win.

The disclosure comes after a major row between Priti Patel and Sir Philip Rutnam, the Home Office permanent secretary, boiled over last week with the disclosure that the Home Secretary had attempted to remove her top official after a series of clashes. 

Sir Philip was accused of “obstructing” and...

Downing Street is holding talks with developers about moving the House of Lords to York after the Prime Minister's chief of staff identified the city as the "feasible choice" for the relocation of the chamber.

Sir Eddie Lister is understood to have backed plans for the upper House to be relocated to a 111-acre site in York which is controlled by a partnership including Homes England, the government agency he chaired until joining Number 10 last year.

Boris Johnson's aides are now holding detailed discussions about constructing a chamber on the site, along with office space for staff and peers and a possible summit venue, when parliamentarians decamp from the Palace of Westminster in 2025, for long-planned restoration works.

The move is likely to alarm peers who had made light of the suggestion that Mr Johnson could move the upper House outside London, when it was first reported last month.

The disclosure also drew...

Boris Johnson has shelved plans to impose a “mansion tax” on owners of expensive homes, following a major backlash among Conservative MPs and grassroots.

The Prime Minister is understood to have "cooled" on the idea of including a new "high value property tax" in next month's budget, having previously discussed the proposals with Sajid Javid, who quit as Chancellor last week.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that the Treasury had also wanted to announce a nationwide revaluation of homes, which would have left millions of families with higher council tax bills.

Both policies are now "highly unlikely" to feature in the budget due to be delivered by Rishi Sunak, Mr Javid's successor, a Government source told this newspaper.

Mr Johnson and Mr Javid are both understood to have backed away from the proposal for a “recurring” wealth tax after this newspaper's disclosure of the plan last week sparked fury among senior...

Boris Johnson has shelved plans to impose a “mansion tax” on owners of expensive homes, following a major backlash among Conservative MPs and grassroots.

The Prime Minister is understood to have "cooled" on the idea of including a new "high value property tax" in next month's budget, having previously discussed the proposals with Sajid Javid, who quit as Chancellor last week.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that the Treasury had also wanted to announce a nationwide revaluation of homes, which would have left millions of families with higher council tax bills.

Both policies are now "highly unlikely" to feature in the budget due to be delivered by Rishi Sunak, Mr Javid's successor, a Government source told this newspaper.

Mr Johnson and Mr Javid are both understood to have backed away from the proposal for a “recurring” wealth tax after this newspaper's disclosure of the plan last week sparked fury among senior...