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Bernie Ecclestone is to become a father again at the age of 89. There are a number of apparent candidates for the title of the world’s oldest father:
— Ramjit Raghav, an Indian farmer, was claimed to be 96 when his son Ranjeet was born in 2012.
— Les Colley, an Australian aged 92, was reported to have fathered a child in 1992.
— Julio Iglesias — the gynaecologist father of the singer of the same name — was 90 when he fathered a daughter in 2006. He died before she was born.
We have become used to daily death tolls from Covid-19. To put these in perspective, in the week to 20 March:
— The ONS registered 10,645 deaths in England and Wales — compared with a five-year average for the week of 10,573.
— 103 deaths were recorded where Covid-19 was a factor (it has risen sharply since).
— 1,514 deaths were from an underlying respiratory cause.
— 4,205 were of people aged over 85; 3,066 were 75-84; 1,780 were 65-74; 1,263 were 45-64; 275 were 15-44; 12 were one to 14; 44 were under one.
The Prince of Wales opened the 4,000-bed Nightingale Hospital in London’s ExCel building after it had been established and fully equipped in just nine days. But there have been buildings constructed faster:
— A coronavirus hospital in Wuhan in January was reported to have been constructed in 6 days.
— In 2011, a 30-storey block in Hunan Province, China, was put up in 15 days.
— The following year an Indian construction company employed 200 people to put up the Instacon building in Mohali, Punjab, in just 48 hours.
Because you read about coronavirus
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