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Thousands of private renters in Hackney face eviction and potentially homelessness as the council says it is unable to make housing benefit payments due to a cyber attack earlier this week.
The council was hit on Tuesday morning by what Mayor Philip Glanville described as a “serious cyber attack” which continues to leave many of its services and IT systems unavailable.

In an update regarding the incident published late on Friday, the council warned it was unable to make some payments, including discretionary housing payments, certain supplier payments, and housing benefit.
Those impacted by the inability to make these payments are being encouraged to contact the council directly.
The type of cyber attack has not been confirmed and the council said it would not publish more details about the attack in order to prevent assisting the attackers, but it has reported a data breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

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It stated: “Key essential services, including our coronavirus response, continue to operate, but some of our services may be unavailable or disrupted for some time.”

The council has not stated how long it expected the disruption to last for, nor did it respond to Sky News’ request for comment about the impact of being unable to make housing benefit payments.

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“With so many people facing housing insecurity due to the economic shock of the pandemic, housing payments are more critical than ever,” warned Greg Beales, the director of campaigns at housing charity Shelter.
“Local residents must not be put at risk as a result of this attack. It’s vital that housing payments are prioritised as services are restored,” Mr Beales added.
While the majority of private renters who receive assistance with their rents will receive it under Universal Credit, run by the Department for Work and Pensions, thousands are believed to be using the council-funded support scheme.
A spokesperson for the Ministry for Housing told Sky News: “The government is working closely with Hackney Borough Council to provide advice and support and ensure vital services are protected.
“Safeguarding frontline services remains the council’s priority,” the government spokesperson added.
If you would like to contact Alexander Martin, you can reach him securely using the private messaging app Signal on +44 (0)7970 376 704 or at [email protected]

Users of the contact-tracing app for England and Wales have reported receiving updates incorrectly telling them the risk level in their area had changed, after what Sky News understands was a mistake by the app’s developers.
The Department of Health and Social Care confirmed the error, but did not say how many people it had affected.

One expert told Sky News he believed that as many as four million people could have been sent incorrect updates by what he described as “a fat finger error”.
The problem was noticed by some of the app’s 16 million users on Friday evening, who complained on Twitter that the risk level for their area had been changed in ways that contradicted the official government guidance.

How you download the new contact-tracing app

Several users in Liverpool, the first city in the country to be put into the toughest Tier 3 category of restrictions for very high risk areas, said their apps had sent them an alert incorrectly telling them they were being downgraded from very high risk to high.

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App users in Sheffield, Nottingham and parts of the Midlands said they had been sent notifications incorrectly telling them their risk alert level had been downgraded to medium.

“We live in Walsall and it is classed as HIGH risk,” one wrote. “Why have we all received an alert saying our risk level has changed due to ‘rising risk levels’ yet it is now MEDIUM? This is very confusing.”

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An expert who was monitoring the app at the moment the error occurred said the problem was almost certainly caused when a blank file was accidentally sent to phones instead of an alert level update.
“I was monitoring for changes to the app to see whether they were addressing any of the issues that had been raised about confusing risk level messages,” said Jeremy Place, an information security specialist.
“I noticed that the file was empty from 18.21 for about an hour.”
A recent update to the app changed the postcode alert system to bring it into line with the government’s new Tier classifications.
Previously, it had three alert levels: low, medium and high. The update changed these to medium, high and very high.
Any phone receiving the empty file would have reverted to the old system, Mr Place said, generating an incorrect alert level and triggering a message which said: “The risk level in your area has changed.”
Several users reported the issue on social media by placing two phones with different alert levels next to each other.
The phone with the incorrect alert level displayed the old alert level format, confirming Mr Place’s analysis.
Mr Place, who operates his own QR check-in app, said that the postcode alert level was refreshed on phones every four hours, but he believed that not every app downloaded the new files at the same time.

Your questions answered on new contact-tracing app

Normal practice, he said, would be to spread the downloads out to reduce the strain on the system, so a quarter of apps were refreshed every hour.
As the empty file was available for around an hour, around a quarter of phones could have been affected by the error.
“We are advised that 16 million phones have downloaded the contact-tracing app. If those phones are still running the app, then it could affect four million people,” said Mr Place.
However, he added that only people who had updated their apps to incorporate the latest change would be affected.
Asked how bad the mistake was, Mr Place, an experienced systems architect, described it as “a fat finger error” with “no technical risk”.
But, he said: “What has been lost is the reputational aspect. You are losing the reputation which is all important for this app.”
In order to correct the error, the team behind the app sent another file at 19.31. As a result of this update, many more phones would be sent a message saying their alert level had changed, although the results of this second alert would be correct.

Image: Message received by NHS track and trace app if you need to self-isolate. Pic: Roland Manthorpe
The news is the latest challenge for the contact-tracing app, which has been criticised for sending out false alarms telling people they have been near someone who has tested positive.
These messages, which are automatically sent by the Google and Apple system on which the app has been built, have caused widespread anxiety among users.
The Department for Health and Social Care has said that any false alarms should be ignored and that instructions to isolate will be made clear within the app.
Asked about the incorrect risk level alerts, a DHSC spokesperson said: “We are aware of an issue which impacted updates to postcode alerts for some app users.
“This was identified and resolved within an hour and users’ phones will automatically update to show the correct local alert level for their area along with new guidance.”

Autonomous drones and unmanned boats could be used to maintain the UK’s offshore wind farms in the next five years, experts have told Sky News.
A team of scientists from the University of Bristol and French-based engineering and science firm Thales are testing technology that will eventually remove the need for humans to carry out the dangerous role.

The process involves AI (artificial intelligence) boats carrying autonomous drones out to wind turbines at sea, before they take off and land on turbine blades and carry out repairs.
Tom Richardson, from the University of Bristol who is leading the team, said: “The number of turbines we have is almost growing exponentially.

Image: A drone is pictured being tested
“There’s a large number out there. They’re offshore, they’re in an environment that’s really challenging, and we have to be able to repair them in the long-term to keep them generating power for us.”

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It is believed the technology could be utilised by energy companies in the next five to 10 years.

The invention is timely – given the UK government’s recent announcement on wind energy.

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Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that offshore wind farms will generate enough electricity to power every home in the country within 10 years.
He wants the UK to become “the world leader” in green energy, he said.
The AI boats and drones are being tested in Plymouth, which has a dedicated Smart Sound – a space where autonomous and AI sea technology can be openly tested.
Chris Wardman, who heads up the autonomous maritime department at Thales, told Sky News the move is about removing human workers from dangerous roles – not taking their jobs.
“It’s really, really important that in this type of business we’re not taking over people’s jobs, but what we’re doing is augmenting that into people’s roles and making things more efficient.
“We’re going green, using less carbon, and all of those sorts of things can be done through the use of autonomy,” he said.
Another use for the unmanned boat system developed by Thales is clearing oceans of plastic waste.

Image: Drones may be able to repair offshore wind farms in the next decade. Pic: University of Bristol/Thales
In conjunction with the University of Southampton, the project could see a fleet of between 20 to 30 robotic boats spend months in dense areas of plastic rubbish in the sea.
Professor Steve Turnock, who is working on the idea, told Sky News: “We know there are bits of ocean where plastic comes together, but it’s still spread over a large area so with these robot vehicles, we can spread them across large areas and use relatively few or no people to get them to operate together and face the challenge of removing these plastics from oceans.”
He said having self-powered unmanned boats cleaning oceans could be just a few years away and people were already trialling new systems.
“In five to 10 years I can see this being part of the everyday. Not just in ocean plastics, but in ocean exploration,” he said.
“It’s all about the economics. If you look at the cost of operating at sea, they need to be large enough to travel fast enough to get there.
“And then travelling slowly around the space. All those people will be on the vessel – you’ll be paying them, etc.
“So if you have a smaller craft, but more of them working across a larger area all the time, that will be more cost effective.”

British Airways is to be fined £20m after losing the personal and financial details of more than 400,000 customers in a cyber attack.
The fine is considerably lower than the £183m fine which the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had initially notified the company of last year.

According to the ICO, the regulator took into account “representations from BA and the economic impact of COVID-19 on their business before setting a final penalty”.
It comes as the company’s chief executive told MPs back in September that the business was “fighting for its survival” as a consequence of the pandemic.
The ICO said it took into account the economic impact of its initial fine as part of its regulatory action policy, which is currently under review.

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Announcing the £20m fine, Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner, described British Airways’ “failure to act” as “unacceptable” and said the fine was the biggest it had ever issued despite the £163m reprieve.

The credit card details of 429,612 customers were compromised in the incident back in 2018. The ICO confirmed that this “included names, addresses, payment card numbers and CVV numbers of 244,000 BA customers”.

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“Other details thought to have been accessed include the combined card and CVV numbers of 77,000 customers and card numbers only for 108,000 customers.
“Usernames and passwords of BA employee and administrator accounts as well as usernames and PINs of up to 612 BA Executive Club accounts were also potentially accessed,” the regulator said.
BA was criticised for failing to prevent and mitigate the risk from cyber attacks, which the ICO said would not “have entailed excessive cost or technical barriers” and some of which were already available through Microsoft, which BA was using.
The investigation also found that BA itself failed to detect the attack on 22 June 2018 and was only alerted to it by a third party more than two months later on 5 September.
“It is not clear whether or when BA would have identified the attack themselves,” the regulator stated.
“This was considered to be a severe failing because of the number of people affected and because any potential financial harm could have been more significant.”
A spokesperson for British Airways, which is owned by Madrid-headquartered International Airlines Group, said: “We alerted customers as soon as we became aware of the criminal attack on our systems in 2018 and are sorry we fell short of our customers’ expectations.
“We are pleased the ICO recognises that we have made considerable improvements to the security of our systems since the attack and that we fully co-operated with its investigation.”

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is smaller and much closer to Earth than previously believed, according to astronomers from the Australian National University, who have given a new data for when it will explode.
While it is normally one of the brightest stars in the sky, Betelgeuse appeared to be dimming in late 2019 – something which scientists thought could mean it was about to imminently explode.

New research suggests that the dimming events were actually due to a dust cloud obscuring the star from Earth and the star’s natural pulsations, but also gives a timeframe for when it will go supernova.

Image: Betelgeuse suddenly dimmed in 2019. Pic: ESO
Betelgeuse is one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye, usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky, occupying the top left position in the constellation Orion.
It is called a red supergiant because the star is nearing the end of its life, swelling out as it burns through the elements in its core before soon – in an astronomical timeframe – exploding in a supernova.

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This supernova won’t be able to harm anyone on Earth, but it would be visible, even during the daytime, shining as bright as a half-full moon for roughly a year, according to scientists at the University of California.

But this event is unlikely to happen within our lifetimes, the Australian researchers suggest in their new paper, which is published in the Astrophysical Journal.

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Using sophisticated modelling to learn about the physics driving Betelgeuse’s pulsations, the researchers effectively confirmed that sound waves inside of the star were causing it to pulsate.
Dr Meredith Joyce from the Australian National University said that the star was still burning helium in its core at the moment “which means it’s nowhere near exploding”.
“We could be looking at around 100,000 years before an explosion happens,” she added.

Image: If the red supergiant went suprnova it would be visible on Earth even during the day
Her co-author Dr Laszlo Molnar from the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest explained how the study also revealed the size of Betelgeuse and its distance from Earth.
“The actual physical size of Betelgeuse has been a bit of a mystery – earlier studies suggested it could be bigger than the orbit of Jupiter.
“Our results say Betelgeuse only extends out to two-thirds of that, with a radius 750 times the radius of the sun,” Dr Molnar said.
“Once we had the physical size of the star, we were able to determine the distance from Earth. Our results show it’s a mere 530 light years from us – 25% closer than previous thought.”
Despite being so much closer, the eventual supernova still won’t have a significant impact on Earth.
“It’s still a really big deal when a supernova goes off. And this is our closest candidate. It gives us a rare opportunity to study what happens to stars like this before they explode,” added Dr Joyce.

Facebook and Twitter are preventing users from sharing a story about Hunter Biden, which was published in circumstances an expert in foreign interference described as “highly suspicious”.
Two articles published in the New York Post claim to present evidence that Hunter Biden, the son of US presidential candidate Joe Biden, introduced a Ukrainian businessman to his father, when he was vice president.

This alleged evidence was stolen from a laptop left at a computer repair shop, whose owner passed it to Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who then provided it to the tabloid newspaper, as it reported.

What you need to know about foreign interference and ‘active measures’

The Biden campaign has denied that a meeting alleged in the documents obtained by the New York Post ever took place.
Twitter said it was preventing two articles from the tabloid being shared due its policy on hacked materials, as well as because images in the articles – cited as evidence – include personal and private information.

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A spokesperson for Facebook said that the platform was “reducing the distribution” of the article as fact-checkers analysed it, as part of the company’s standard process to tackle misinformation.

President Trump criticised the decisions of the social media giants, tweeting: “So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun’ emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost.”

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Image: Hunter Biden’s father is the Democratic candidate for US president
Professor Thomas Rid, an expert on disinformation who has testified before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, warned that the article was “highly suspicious”.
It is “an old Cold War disinformation tactic to pass information, especially but not exclusively when forged, to low-brow newspapers that have high circulation and low standards of investigation”, he said.
The New York Post has not responded to speculation that the documents it published contained forgeries.

First, the surfacing. This here is highly suspicious behavior. Especially when viewed in the context of a political campaign. Creative, anonymous, credibility-generating, somewhat plausible. Exactly how a professional would surface disinformation and potentially forgeries. pic.twitter.com/zIer2QR99a
— Thomas Rid (@RidT) October 14, 2020

The social media companies have been under the spotlight to tackle potential foreign interference in the 2020 US election following their perceived failures to do so during 2016.
Back in August, William Evanina, the director of the US National Counterintelligence and Security Centre, said Russia was attempting to discredit Joe Biden ahead of the November election.
Mr Evanina said: “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former vice president Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment’.
“This is consistent with Moscow’s public criticism of him when he was vice president for his role in the Obama administration’s policies on Ukraine and its support for the anti-Putin opposition inside Russia.”
Hunter Biden used to sit on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, which became a key focus of the impeachment trial against Mr Trump last year.

A team of palaeontologists in the UK have discovered a new species of small pterosaur, similar in size to a turkey.
The dinosaur is unlike any other pterosaur discovered due to its long and slender toothless beak, similar to that of a kiwi bird, according to the study published in Cretaceous Research.

Scientists were surprised when they discovered the fossil and initially assumed it was part of the fin spine of a fish.

Image: The beak was similar to a modern kiwi bird’s
However, palaeontologists from Portsmouth and Bath universities realised the bone had an unusual texture, seen only in pterosaurs, and figured out it was indeed a piece of beak.
Professor David Martill, of the University of Portsmouth, said: “We’ve never seen anything like this little pterosaur before. The bizarre shape of the beak was so unique, at first the fossils weren’t recognised as a pterosaur.”

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The fossil was found in Morocco and subsequent searches have revealed more fossils of the animal, which dates back to the late Cretaceous era.

Roy Smith, lead author of the project and a PhD student at Portsmouth, said: “Just imagine how delighted I was, while on field work in Morocco, to discover the lower jaw to match the upper jaw found by Dr Longrich of this utterly unique fossil animal.”

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The new species, named Leptostomia begaaensis, is believed to have used its beak to probe into dirt and mud for hidden prey, hunting like present-day sandpipers or kiwis to find worms, crustaceans, and maybe even small hard-shelled clams.
Pterosaurs are the winged cousins to dinosaurs and over 100 species of the reptiles have been discovered, varying between the size of a fighter jet to as small as a sparrow.
Professor Martill said: “The diets and hunting strategies of pterosaurs were diverse – they likely ate meat, fish and insects. The giant 500-pound pterosaurs probably ate whatever they wanted.
“Some species hunted food on the wing, others stalked their prey on the ground. Now, the fragments of this remarkable little pterosaur show a lifestyle previously unknown for pterosaurs.”

Newly classified pterosaur was one of history’s largest flying animals

Using a computerised tomography scan, the scientists were able to discover a network of internal canals within the beak for nerves that helped the pterosaur detect prey underground.
Dr Nick Longrich, from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, said: “Leptostomia may actually have been a fairly common pterosaur, but it’s so strange – people have probably been finding bits of this beast for years, but we didn’t know what they were until now.”
He added: “We’re underestimating pterosaur diversity because the fossil record gives us a biased picture.
“Pterosaur fossils typically preserve in watery settings – seas, lakes, and lagoons – because water carries sediments to bury bones,” Dr Longrich said.
“Pterosaurs flying over water to hunt for fish tend to fall in and die, so they’re common as fossils.
“Pterosaurs hunting along the margins of the water will preserve more rarely, and many from inland habitats may never preserve as fossils at all.
“There’s a similar pattern in birds. If all we had of birds was their fossils, we’d probably think that birds were mostly aquatic things like penguins, puffins, ducks and albatrosses.
“Even though they’re a minority of the species, their fossil record is a lot better than for land birds like hummingbirds, hawks, and ostriches,” Dr Longrich said.

The UK may have already “missed the boat” for a pre-planned lockdown, forcing the government to introduce emergency restrictions like the ones in March, a leading government scientific advisor has warned.
Professor Graham Medley, who sits on the Scientific Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told journalists that a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown could “buy time” to improve systems such as Test and Trace.

But, he said, with coronavirus cases rising exponentially across the country, the UK might have run out of time to act pre-emptively.

Image: Professor Graham Medley says the UK may have ‘missed the boat’ for a circuit breaker lockdown
“The whole point of this is to do it before you have to,” Prof Medley said. “We are moving into a regime where we are going to have to do something.”
The idea of a planned “circuit breaker” lockdown was one of five “interventions for immediate introduction” suggested by SAGE on 21 September, only one of which was implemented by the government.

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The concept came from Prof Medley and scientists at the University of Warwick, including Professor Matt Keeling, a member of modelling committee SPI-M, who presented a paper to SAGE suggesting that a lockdown could be scheduled across the October half-term in order to minimise disruption to students.

Prof Medley said that it was now probably too late to introduce a “precautionary break” at that point, as it would not be possible to give advance notice to people, businesses and public services, a crucial part of minimising the damage caused by such lockdowns.

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He added: “In some ways we kind of missed the boat a little bit for these precautionary breaks. But I think they are something certainly to think about in terms of the future.”

Labour leader demands two to three week ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown over half-term

Possible times for circuit breakers, he said, could be early December or over the spring half term.
As cases would invariably rise again after the break – the scientists said – the short lockdowns might have to be introduced repeatedly.
The news that all but one of SAGE’s recommendations were ignored by the government in September has caused controversy, with opposition politicians accusing the government of failing to “follow the science”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has warned that without a “circuit breaker” lockdown, Britain will “sleepwalk into a long and bleak winter”. The Liberal Democrats have also joined the call for a pre-emptive lockdown.
Asked why his paper had not been released until today, despite being presented to SAGE in September, Prof Medley said: “I don’t know why the SAGE version of the paper has not been published.”
Asked on Sky News this morning whether the government was considering such a measure, cabinet minister Thérèse Coffey said: “I do not believe that the prime minister wants to set off on a national lockdown.”
She added that the move would “not be fair” on areas where the rate of infection is low.

Northern Ireland imposes four-week circuit breaker lockdown

The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, suggests that a full lockdown, with stay-at-home orders and school closures, could save more than 7,000 deaths over the rest of the year if the virus was growing by 3% a week, although the scientists stress that this number is not a forecast.
But the paper does not consider crucial factors which would determine the success of any restrictions, including the level of public support, and what action would be taken during the “precautionary break” to ensure further restrictions are not needed in future.
“A precautionary break is not a lasting control measure, but effectively buys more time to put other controls in place; it takes us ‘back to a time when cases were lower’,” the authors said in a statement.
“The reduction in cases also allows measures which are resource limited [such as test, trace, and isolate] to potentially have a greater impact.”
The scientific paper, which used a model to estimate the impact of various interventions, concluded that stricter lockdowns were more effective. Another key factor, according to the model, was timeliness.

Which tier is my area – and what are the new rules of the three-tier lockdown?

“There are no good epidemiological reasons to delay the break,” the scientists write. “This will simply push back any benefits until later, leaving more time for additional cases to accumulate.”
Other epidemiologists disagreed about conclusions of the model, which they said only considered new infections, and thus did not take into account the fact that case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths would continue to rise even after the lockdown was introduced, because of the lag in diagnosis.
Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said lockdowns “need more than a couple of weeks to achieve a substantial reduction in numbers”.
In order to keep cases at a steady rate, he said: “You would need to have as many as twice as many days in circuit-break lockdown as relaxed days, making such short lockdowns little different from the more prolonged lockdown we saw in March, April and May.”
The paper does not directly consider the economic costs of a circuit breaker lockdown, although it does note that “a short lockdown period would limit the economic costs of such a measure”, if it avoided the need to introduce a longer break.
Asked about this, the scientists said that while any lockdown would inevitably cause significant economic harm, as well as harm to mental and physical health, planning the intervention would mean the worst of these costs could be avoided.

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If the outbreak was growing at 3%, then the paper suggests a circuit-breaker lockdown could reduce hospitalisations from 132,400 to 66,500.
If the infection rate was growing faster, the impact of the lockdown would be greater, saving as many as 107,000 deaths – although the scientists stress that this is not a realistic possibility, as “the worst-case scenarios would never be allowed to continue without intervention”.
A less strict lockdown, where schools stay open but hospitality venues are closed, would have less impact – the scientists estimate – cutting deaths to 15,600 under the moderate growth scenario.

A “short, sharp” two-week lockdown over the October half-term could prevent more than 7,000 deaths, according to a paper by two of the government’s leading scientific advisers.
The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, suggests that a full lockdown, with stay-at-home orders and school closures, could reduce COVID-19 deaths from 19,900 to 12,100 over the rest of the year.

It also suggests hospitalisations could be reduced from 132,400 to 66,500, assuming moderate growth in the infection rate.
The findings have been used to support Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s warning that without a “circuit breaker” lockdown Britain will “sleepwalk into a long and bleak winter”.

Labour leader demands two to three week ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown over half-term

But the paper does not consider crucial factors which would determine the success of any restrictions, including the level of public support, and what action would be taken during the “precautionary break” to ensure further restrictions aren’t needed in future.

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“A precautionary break is not a lasting control measure, but effectively buys more time to put other controls in place; it takes us ‘back to a time when cases were lower'”, said the paper’s authors.

“The reduction in cases also allows measures which are resource limited (such as test-trace-and-isolate) to potentially have a greater impact.”

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One of the paper’s authors, Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, attends SAGE, the government’s most senior committee for scientific advice. Another, Matt Keeling of the University of Warwick, is a member of modelling committee SPI-M.

Northern Ireland imposes four-week circuit breaker lockdown

Their model predicted that the impact of the lockdown would be greater if the infection rate was growing faster, saving as many as 107,000 deaths in the most extreme case – although the scientists stress that this is not a realistic possibility, as “the worst-case scenarios would never be allowed to continue without intervention”.
Stricter lockdowns are more effective, they found. A less strict lockdown, where schools stayed open but hospitality venues were closed, would have less impact, the scientists estimate, cutting deaths to 15,600 under the moderate growth scenario.
The scientists also conclude that lockdowns work better if they are introduced earlier.
“There are no good epidemiological reasons to delay the break,” they write. “This will simply push back any benefits until later, leaving more time for additional cases to accumulate.”

Minister plays down prospect of national lockdown as England’s three-tier system comes into force

Asked on Sky News this morning whether the government was considering such a measure, cabinet minister Therese Coffey said: “I do not believe that the Prime Minister wants to set off on a national lockdown,” adding that the move would “not be fair” on areas where the rate of infection is low.
The paper does not consider the economic costs of a circuit breaker lockdown, although it does note that “a short lockdown period would limit the economic costs of such a measure,” if it avoided the need to introduce a longer break.

A man from the UK had sudden hearing loss after testing positive for COVID-19, a medical journal has reported.
The 45-year-old man who suffered from asthma but was described as “fit and well” was admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) after contracting COVID-19.

However, after a long period of time in the ICU, it was found that he had developed hearing problems.

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Inside Warrington hospital’s COVID-19 intensive care unit

Although this is the first report of coronavirus-linked hearing loss in the UK, it is not the first in the world.
The British man’s hearing loss, known as sudden onset sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL), was detailed in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

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The man was admitted to hospital 10 days after the onset of coronavirus symptoms and required intubation at an ICU for 30 days.

He also suffered from high blood pressure, ventilator-associated pneumonia, anaemia and a blood clot.

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A week after he left the ICU, he had noticed SSNHL and left-sided tinnitus, despite having no history of hearing loss or ear problems.
He was seen by ear, nose and throat specialists a week later and was treated with oral steroids for seven days, which reportedly resulted in a partial subjective improvement in his condition.
A small amount of steroid was also injected directly into his ear, but this did not help clear his hearing loss.
“Hearing loss and tinnitus are symptoms that have been seen in patients with both Covid-19 and influenza virus but have not been highlighted,” the authors wrote.
“In the case presented here, the patient was previously well with no other attributable cause for his SSNHL.
“Furthermore, it must be noted that the patient mentioned the difficulty acknowledging the hearing loss in the busy ITU environment and his realisation afterwards.
“Despite the low numbers of studies, it is significant to consider the possibility of a relationship between Covid-19 and SSNHL.”
They added: “This is the first reported case of sensorineural hearing loss following COVID-19 infection in the UK.

Which tier are you in?

“Given the widespread presence of the virus in the population and the significant morbidity of hearing loss, it is important to investigate this further.
“This is especially true given the need to promptly identify and treat the hearing loss and the current difficulty in accessing medical services.
“We suggest that patients are asked about hearing loss in the ITU environments when applicable, and any patient reporting acute hearing loss should be referred to otolaryngology on an emergency basis.”
Sudden hearing loss can “easily be missed in an intensive care setting”, according to experts from University College London and the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital, who have called for medics to be aware of the complication.
By raising awareness, medics would be able to offer an early course of steroids, which would in turn give the best chance of recovery.