Children’s mental health referrals hit record levels, and cancer backlog warning

Here are five things you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic this Friday morning. We’ll have another update for you this evening.

More children than ever have been referred to the NHS in England for serious mental health problems, the latest figures show. Some 409,347 under-18s were referred for specialist care for issues such as self-harm and eating disorders between April and October 2021. That was 77% higher than the same period in 2019. Head teachers and a children’s charity say they are seeing a rise in other less severe issues, too. The pandemic, and months of school closures, have been blamed for some of the increase.

Improving cancer care will be a huge challenge, ministers are being warned as the government promises a new 10-year strategy for England. Figures suggest there have been 50,000 fewer diagnoses in the UK since Covid hit, risking an increasing number of late diagnoses, cancer charities say. Health Secretary Sajid Javid says the “war on cancer” strategy will be published this year.

The legal requirement for those who test positive for Covid on the Isle of Man to isolate could be removed on 31 March, the chief minister Alfred Cannan has said. Under the changes, testing and isolation rules at the island’s border would also be lifted and contact tracing scrapped. Some 73 people have died with Covid on the Isle of Man since the pandemic began.

The community-focused Nextdoor social network has grown substantially during the pandemic, says chief executive Sarah Friar. The network is designed to offer a hyper-local experience, creating social newsfeeds about your neighbourhood. The company says the app is now used by one in five households in the UK, with daily active usage doubling on a weekly basis as the pandemic took hold in early 2020. But the network has had to change – as Ms Friar explains.

Australia feels different than it did when we lived here eight years ago, writes the BBC’s Nick Bryant. More fractured. More remote. More inward-looking. For much of the pandemic, Covid restrictions have turned the lines that divide the states and territories into rigid borders that could only be crossed with the grant of a permit – paperwork that was routinely denied. Not since the founding of modern Australia, more than 100 years ago, has the country been more geographically fragmented.

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