Coronavirus news – live: Teachers and parents criticise threat of fines for children who miss school as scientists claim to have found first patient reinfected with Covid-19

Teaching unions and parents have hit back over the threat of fines if children do not return to the classroom next week, warning it could undermine trust between families and schools at a crucial point in the UK’s recovery from coronavirus.

It comes after Boris Johnson urged parents to send their children back to school when they reopen in England, saying that yet more time outside the classroom is a greater health risk than returning – a view echoed by Jennie Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, who said car crashes and flu were greater health dangers than Covid-19.

Scientists, meanwhile, claim to have found the first person to be reinfected with coronavirus – a man in Hong Kong who is believed to have caught one strain four months after battling a different incarnation of Covid-19.