Early evening summary
- The UK has recorded 12,594 new coronavirus cases. This is almost double the daily rate at which new cases were running at last week and, unlike the high figures published on Saturday and Sunday, it is not inflated by the inclusion of the cases that went missing because of the data error. (See 4.26pm.)
- Manchester now has its weekly new case rate running at more than 500 cases per 100,000 people after the figures were revised to include the data that went missing. (See 5.25pm.) Other towns and cities, particularly in the north of England, have seen their case rate figures jump significantly. These are from the BBC’s Daniel Wainwright.
What a difference a data makes. How the rate per 100,000 looked across England in the week to 1 October on Friday, before the glitch was found, and how it looked last night. See next tweet for caveats. https://t.co/RlJIxbFFnu pic.twitter.com/bntK9pdItT
— Daniel Wainwright (@danwainwright) October 5, 2020
Normally, we expect there to be more tests added in for the most recent days as it takes a bit of time for them to come back. Some of these are down to normal lag. But we wouldn't expect the rate to double the way it did in Manchester, for example, up to 495.6 per 100,000
— Daniel Wainwright (@danwainwright) October 5, 2020
That’s all from me. But our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog. It’s here.
Back in the Commons, in response to a question from the Conservative former Welsh secretary Alun Cairns, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said he would announce “a more simplified approach” to local restrictions in due course and that he had consulted the devolved administrations. He said it would be even simpler if it were adopted UK-wide, although he said it would be up to them to decide if they wanted to adopt the new system too.
Updated
England now has more than 2,500 patients in hospital with Covid, new figures show
According to the government’s coronavirus dashboard, there are now more than 2,500 patients in hospital in England with coronavirus. Today’s figure is 2,593 - up from 2,329 on Sunday. This is the highest figure since the end of June.
And the number of coronavirus patients in England on mechanical ventilation is 331, up from 310 yesterday.
Admissions are also still going up. (Overall hospital numbers are determined by admissions and discharges.) The most recent Covid hospital admission figure for England on the dashboard is 386 on Saturday, up from 371 the previous day.
Hancock is still responding to questions from MPs in the Commons, but he is now increasingly being asked about the planned 40 “new” hospitals (which are mostly upgrades, and not imminent, as the Guardian explained at the weekend). At least two Tory MPs now have referred to them as “Boris hospitals”, which presumably is a label we’ll be hearing quite frequently.
In the Commons Greg Clark, the Conservative chair of the science committee, asked Matt Hancock whether Kate Bingham, the head of the government’s vaccine taskforce, was right when she told the Financial Times that any vaccine would only go to half the population. (See 9.01am.)
Hancock did not give a clear answer, but did not say she was wrong. He told Clark:
The vaccine taskforce has done incredibly important work in supporting the scientific development and manufacture of vaccines, and in procuring six different types of vaccine from around the world.
The work of deploying a vaccine is for my department, working with the NHS and the armed forces, who are helping enormously with the logistical challenge.
We will take the advice on the deployment of the vaccine based on clinical advice from the joint committee on vaccinations and immunisations.
Updated
Manchester's weekly Covid rate now over 500 cases per 100,000 people, new figures show
Manchester’s weekly rate of new Covid-19 cases has now topped 500 cases per 100,000 people, new data shows.
As PA Media reports, a total of 2,927 new cases were recorded in Manchester in the seven days to October 2 - the equivalent of 529.4 cases per 100,000, up from 246.4 in the previous week.
Manchester has the highest weekly rate of any local authority area in England.
Knowsley has the second highest rate, which has jumped from 324.1 to 498.5, with 752 new cases.
Liverpool is in third place, up from 306.4 to 487.1, with 2,426 new cases.
All figures are based on Public Health England data published on Monday afternoon.
Sheffield University is the latest higher education institution to see mass Covid infections, with almost 500 students and staff testing positive.
According to the university, 474 students and five staff were confirmed to have the virus over a seven-day period from the start of autumn term last Monday, with daily student cases building from 19 on the first day of tracking, peaking on Friday at 98, down to 90 on Sunday.
To put that in some context, the university has around 29,000 students and 8,000 members of staff.
It follows confirmation last week that 770 students at Northumbria University had tested positive since the beginning of the new term, one of 80 universities in the UK with confirmed cases of Covid 19.
A statement on the Sheffield University website said:
We recognise how difficult it is for students who are starting or returning to university and need to self-isolate because of Covid-19 cases.
To make sure we are supporting students in the best way possible, we will contact all students who are self-isolating to check on their welfare and offer practical and emotional support. We will also make sure that all students know how to access our mental health and wellbeing services while isolating.
Updated
This is from Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It puts the last month in perspective.
In the space of a month, the UK has gone from reporting 1000-1500 cases per day to around 12,000. Test positivity has gone from 0.5% to 2.7%. Deaths from around 7 per day to over 40. pic.twitter.com/HFjx736EUk
— Adam Kucharski (@AdamJKucharski) October 5, 2020
Hancock says long Covid can be “very debilitating”. He says more research is being carried out, and only today the National Institute for Clinical Excellence has published guidance on how it should be treated.
Here is more from what Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said as he replied to Matt Hancock’s statement.
In recent weeks we’ve had people told to travel hundreds of miles for a test, we’ve had hundreds of children out of school unable to get a test. We’ve had tracers sitting idle watching Netflix. We’ve had care home tests taking days to be processed.
Yesterday we had a health minister saying this could be a moment of national pride like the Olympics. We’ve had a prime minister in a complete muddle over the rules and now, at one of the most crucial points in this pandemic, we learn that almost 16,000 positive cases when unreported for a week.
That means as many as 48,000 contacts not traced and not isolating. Thousands of people blissfully unaware they’ve been exposed to Covid potentially spreading this deadly virus at a time when hospital admissions are increasing and we’re in the second wave.
This isn’t just a shambles, it’s so much worse than this and it gives me no comfort to say it, but it’s putting lives at risk and he should apologise when he responds.
Hancock confirms government set to simplify local lockdown rules
At the end of his statement Matt Hancock signalled that the government will soon announce a system to simplify local lockdown rules. It is expected to opt for a three-tier system.
Hancock said it was “critical” the UK’s Covid-19 rules were “clear at a local level” so the public could “be certain of what they need to do” to suppress the virus. He went on:
I’ll update the house in due course on what action the government is taking so we can have more consistent approaches to levels of local action, working with our colleagues in local government.
In the Commons Labour’s Stella Creasy asks who will take responsibility for the error. She wants to know if the contractors will pay a penalty.
Hancock says this was a problem with Public Health England’s computer system, although he claims that is probably not the institution that Creasy wants to blame.
Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative chair of the health committee, says the Lighthouse laboratories are being overwhelmed. He says local hospitals should be given a bigger role.
This is an argument he made on the World at One. See 4.08pm.
Hancock says local hospitals are already playing a big role in testing NHS staff.
Hancock is responding to Ashworth.
He says that 51% of people who tested positive have already been reached, and their contacts are being called concurrently, he says, so they can be told to self-isolate.
He says the problem arose in a Public Health England “legacy system”. The government had already decided to upgrade it, he says.
He says the other 49% cases should be contacted as soon as possible.
Labour says 'lives at risk' because of government's testing data 'shambles'
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, is speaking now.
This is not just a shambles, it’s so much worse than that.
And it gives me no comfort to say it - it’s putting lives at risk, and [Hancock] should apologise.
Ashworth asks how many of the close contacts of the people whose positive test data went missing have now been contacted.
He asks why it took so long for the problem to come to light. He asks why it was only made public on Sunday night.
And he renews Labour’s call for local authorities to take control of test and trace.
The prime minister told this house on 20 May we would have a world-beating system in place by June, it’s now October. The system is neither competent nor improving, problems are getting worse.
The government is failing on the basics, when will he finally fix this mess?
Updated
Hancock told MPs that the government’s assessment of the coronavirus problem had “not substantially changed” as as result of the data error.
UPDATE: Here is the full quote.
This morning the Joint Biosecurity Centre [JBC] presented to me their updated analysis of the epidemic based on the new figures.
The chief medical officer [Chris Whitty] has analysed that our assessment of the disease and its impact has not substantially changed as a result of these data.
The JBC has confirmed that this has not impacted the basis on which decisions about local action were taken last week. Nevertheless, this is a serious issue that is being investigated fully.
Updated
There were 15,841 cases that were overlooked by the system because of the missing data. Hancock’s figure a moment ago implies more than 7,000 people have yet to be reached.
Hancock says half of cases overlooked by contact tracing because of data error reached by this morning
Hancock says NHS test and trace has been working hard to reach the close contacts of people who tested positive who were missed because the data went astray.
He says from Saturday morning an extra 6,500 staff hours have been allocated to the task.
By 9am this morning 51% of the missing cases had been contacted a second time, he says.
UPDATE: Here is the quote.
Contact tracing of these cases began first thing Saturday. We brought in 6,500 hours of extra contact tracing over the weekend and I can report to the house as of 9am today 51% of the cases have now been contacted a second time for contact tracing purposes.
I want to reassure the house that outbreak control in care homes, schools and hospitals has not been directly affected because dealing with outbreaks in these settings does not primarily rely on this PHE system.
Updated
Matt Hancock's Commons statement
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is making a Commons statement now.
He starts by confirming the latest case figures. (See 4.26pm.) That means the 12,594 number is a proper daily one, not one inflated by the missing cases.
UK records 12,594 new coronavirus cases
The government’s coronavirus dashboard has been updated.
- The UK has recorded 12,594 new coronavirus cases. That is almost double the figures we were seeing in the middle of last week, when the figures were hovering around the 7,000 mark. The figures for Saturday and Sunday were 12,872 and 22,961 respectively but these numbers included the “lost” cases. On the website Public Health England says the Saturday and Sunday figures were inflated by the addition of those extra cases. But it does not add that caveat to today’s figures, implying that this is a genuine daily figure, not an inflated one. As usual, it is important to stress that although this is more than double the peak for daily cases in the spring, at that point far fewer tests were being carried out. The overall prevalence of coronavirus is still much lower than it was then.
- The UK has recorded 19 further deaths.
Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative chair of the Commons health committee, has joined those calling for councils to be given a bigger role in the test and trace system. He told Radio 4’s the World at One:
The problem with a centralised system is that if you have a glitch, that gets magnified throughout the whole system, and you have less resilience. I think we now need to look – given the problems we’ve been having at test and trace – at those structures, and ask whether it is time we had a more decentralised model.
This is an argument that mayors and council leaders, particularly in the north of England, have been making for some time. It is also one of the key elements of the Labour party’s plan for a revised anti-Covid strategy.
Hunt said that the decision to go for a centralised approach in the spring was understandable.
The government took a strategic decision to go for a centralised structure, and the reason for that was because we were in a big hurry, because Matt Hancock had announced his 100,000 tests-a-day target at the beginning of April; there were just four weeks to deliver it, and probably the only way you could do that was through a small number of highly centralised laboratories.
Hunt said he would now like to see local hospitals play a bigger role.
Most big hospitals have got their own laboratories … We need to ask whether those laboratories could do more. We should look at … whether the hospitals should take responsibility for the testing people in care homes, because they have very good local links with the care homes in their areas.
We should also look at whether hospitals could take responsibility for the weekly testing of NHS staff, which is going to become incredibly important as we go into winter ... Making better use of what’s called the ‘pillar one’ testing system, I think, will be the key if we want to unlock some of these problems.
We now need to ask whether we can better make use of universities or hospital laboratories, giving them support, giving them the extra chemicals and reagents and capacity that they need, so that we have more resilience in the overall system.
Updated
There is also a good article on the Excel missing Covid data fiasco here, by Sky’s economics editor Ed Conway. He says that feeding a CSV file into Excel in this context was “in data management terms ... a little like putting together a car with sellotape”.
In Northern Ireland there have been 616 new coronavirus cases, but no new deaths, according to the latest update from the Department of Health in the region.
This chart, from the dashboard, shows how the number of people in hospital with coronavirus in Northern Ireland has been rising over the past month.
Updated
How Excel may have caused loss of 16,000 Covid tests in England
My colleague Alex Hern has a good article explaining why a “million-row limit on Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet software” may have led to almost 16,000 coronavirus cases being missed by Public Health England. It’s here.
And here’s an extract.
In this case, the Guardian understands, one lab had sent its daily test report to PHE in the form of a CSV file – the simplest possible database format, just a list of values separated by commas. That report was then loaded into Microsoft Excel, and the new tests at the bottom were added to the main database.
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed. That means that, once the lab had performed more than a million tests, it was only a matter of time before its reports failed to be read by PHE.
Public Health Wales has recorded 596 further coronavirus cases but no new deaths. The details are here.
This chart, from the Public Health Wales dashboard, shows how new cases have been rising in Wales over the past month, although it does not include the very latest figures.
Boris Johnson’s father has admitted he “slipped up” after being photographed again breaching rules on wearing masks, this time at a London tube station. As PA Media reports, after the photograph was published, showing him at a Bakerloo line station with his mask under his nose, Stanley Johnson insisted he was unaware that rules also applied when standing on the platform.
When informed that doing so was required on all areas of the London underground, he told PA:
I’m happy to be informed by you that this is indeed the case ... it’s only my third day back in London. I am learning every day.
Johnson attracted criticism last week after being pictured without a mask in a shop, despite his son’s government imposing a law requiring their use.
Updated
NHS England has recorded a further 10 coronavirus hospital deaths. It says that the people who died were aged between 67 and 91, and that all but one of them had underlying health conditions. The details are here.
Here is a clip with an extract from Rishi Sunak’s speech to the virtual Conservative party conference earlier.
In response Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, released this statement.
The chancellor spoke for just ten minutes today - and he had nothing to say to the millions of people whose jobs are now at risk because of his policies.
Britain risks the worst unemployment crisis in decades and Rishi Sunak’s name will be all over it.
And this is from Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary.
Warm words and sympathy do not put food on the table. I’m afraid to say that when the country hungers for a hearty diet of jobs saving and creation, the chancellor has offered little more than thin gruel for fearful workers.
The country is braced for mass unemployment; what we want to hear is what the government is going to do to fend that off. Where is the plan? We need plans to stimulate growth of new sectors now, to nourish them so that they are in a position to provide jobs to those sectors devastated by the virus, and we need action to stop millions of people being tipped overnight into poverty.
Manchester and Liverpool close to 500 cases per 100,000 people, revised figures show
The weekly rate of new coronavirus cases has soared in dozens of areas of England, following the addition of nearly 16,000 cases that went unreported by because of a technical error with an Excel spreadsheet, PA Media reports.
Analysis by PA shows that Manchester now has the highest rate in England, with 2,740 cases recorded in the seven days to 1 October - the equivalent of 495.6 cases per 100,000 people, up from 223.2 in the previous week.
Liverpool has the second highest rate, up from 287.1 to 456.4, with 2,273 new cases and Knowsley in Merseyside is in third place, up from 300.3 to 452.1, with 682 new cases.
Other areas recording sharp increases include Newcastle upon Tyne (up from 256.6 to 399.6, with 1,210 new cases); Nottingham (up from 52.0 to 283.9, with 945 new cases); Leeds (up from 138.8 to 274.5, with 2,177 new cases); and Sheffield (up from 91.8 to 233.1, with 1,363 new cases).
All figures are based on Public Health England data published on Sunday night.
Updated
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, took part in a call with metro mayors over lunchtime. Before it took place, Jamie Driscoll, the Labour mayor for the North of Tyne, said he would be asking for three things. He said he wanted:
One, support for jobs and businesses affected by lockdown. We stand to lose tens of thousands of jobs, and face all the health effects that has.
Two, local control of test, track and trace, and crucially, financial support for everyone who needs to self-isolate so they can keep others safe.
Three, a meeting with my regional colleagues and me to get the first two implemented.
In this recent Guardian article Gabriel Scally, a former regional director of public health and honorary professor of public health at the University of Bristol, explains why he thinks it is vital for contact tracing to managed locally.
Test and trace bringing in more staff to call overlooked contacts 'as matter of urgency', says No 10
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman said that NHS test and trace was deploying more staff to track down the people who should have been told to self-isolate because they have been in close contact with someone testing positive. “What they have been able to do is to put on a very significant number of additional shifts,” the spokesman said.
Individuals were being traced “as a matter of urgency”, he said.
The spokesman said the number of call attempts was being increased from 10 to 15 to ensure as many contacts as possible were traced.
And he said that decisions on local lockdowns had not been affected by the unreported cases, and that the government stood ready to introduce further restrictions if required.
Asked to explain what caused the problem, the spokesman said there had been a “technical issue” relating to the transfer of data between NHS test and trace and Public Health England (PHE).
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is due to say more in a statement to the Commons at around 4.30pm.
Asked if the prime minister still had confidence in the head of NHS test and trace, Dido Harding, the spokesman said: “He does, yes.”
Updated
At her briefing Nicola Sturgeon also announced the latest coronavirus figures for Scotland.
NS: "I can report that the total number of positive cases that were reported yesterday was 697 which is 12.8% of people newly tested. The total number of positive cases is 32,906."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
NS: "242 of these cases are in Greater Glasgow & Clyde, 145 in Lothian, and 130 in Lanarkshire. The remaining 180 cases are spread across nine other health board areas."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
NS: "I can also confirm that 218 people are in hospital. That's an increase of 8 since yesterday. 22 people are in intensive care now which is the same number as yesterday."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
NS: "Finally, in the past 24 hours no deaths have been registered of patients who first tested positive over the previous 28 days, but since this is a Monday I will give the usual caveat."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
The number of coronavirus patients in hospital in Scotland has risen sharply in the last week. Today’s figure, 218, is eight up on yesterday’s, and and close to double the figure for last Monday (122).
In her briefing Sturgeon also said that Public Health Scotland has improved its dashboard presenting this information. It’s here.
Here is a chart from the dashboard with the data about positive cases.
Sturgeon says further restrictions might be necessary in Scotland
In her daily briefing Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said further restrictions might have to be imposed in Scotland.
NS: "The restrictions we announced a couple of weeks ago, particularly that request to everybody not to visit other people's houses right now, is an attempt to get the virus under control, and we are very hopeful it will help us stem increase of the virus over the next period."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
NS: "But given the numbers we're seeing, we aren't - I've been very open about this over the past few days - it is possible we will have to do more."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
NS: "There may well be a need for some further restrictions in the near future. I can say that the government will be considering the latest clinical evidence and advice later on today, and the cabinet will be considering the up-to-date situation when it meets tomorrow morning."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
NS: "If we do decide more restrictions are necessary - and no decision has been taken yet - I want to give an assurance that we will endeavour to give you, the public, and of course the Scottish Parliament, as much notice as possible."
— The SNP (@theSNP) October 5, 2020
Updated
England Covid cases error means 50,000 contacts may not have been traced
Boris Johnson was not able to say how many people did not get a prompt warning about the need to self-isolate because of last week’s positive cases data error (see 12.51pm), but a simple calculation based on how many cases there were, and the average number of close contracts reported by people referred to test and trace, suggests around 50,000 people were missed. There are more details in our story here.
Updated
Welsh government says it's considering banning visitors from high-Covid parts of England
The Welsh government is considering taking action to stop people from Covid hotspots in northern England and the West Midlands travelling to Wales.
Welsh ministers have asked Boris Johnson to clamp down on travel from areas in England that are under lockdown but the prime minister has resisted the idea.
Speaking at a Welsh government press conference, the health minister, Vaughan Gething, said:
We do know that travel brings with it additional risks. We know if people from Liverpool come and mix, they are in the same environment, the same pub, there’s a risk of there being spreading events.
Given that the prime minister announced in an interview that he is not minded to introduce any travel restrictions, we’re actively considering what we should do.
We have quarantine regulations for international travel. So for some hotspot areas in the north of England and the West Midlands, if they were other countries we would have quarantine regulations for them. We’re having to consider how we use our powers to protect lower prevalence areas of Wales.
At the same time we don’t want to take a whole nation approach. There’s no good reason to prevent someone from [a low prevalence area of England such as] Devon at this time coming to visit Pembrokeshire.
Photograph: Ian Boswell/Alamy Stock Photo
Updated
Johnson cannot say how many people did not get prompt self-isolation advice because of data error
Here are some more lines from the interviews Boris Johnson was giving this morning.
- Johnson was unable to say how many close contacts of people with coronavirus had not been told to self-isolate because of the nearly 16,000 cases not referred on time to the test and trace the system. Asked how many people might not have had a prompt warning, he replied:
I can’t give you those figures. What I can say is all those people are obviously being contacted and the key thing is that everybody, whether in this group or generally, should self-isolate.
- He said the problem involved data being “truncated”. He said:
What happened here was that some of the data got truncated and it was lost.
- He said the data loss had not affected the government’s overall analysis of how the virus was spreading. He said:
The incidence that we are seeing in the cases corresponds to pretty much where we thought we were.
And, to be frank, I think that the slightly lower numbers that we’d seen, you know, didn’t really reflect where we thought the disease was likely to go, so I think these numbers are realistic.
The crucial thing is that in the next few days, week, we’ll see more clearly whether some of the restrictions that we put in - the extra enforcement of the rule of six, the extra enforcement of self-isolation, the rules on masks and so on - all the stuff that has come in, we’ll see whether that starts to work in driving down the virus.
- He said the government wanted to keep local lockdown rules as “simple as possible” - although he would not confirm that a three-tier system was planned. He said:
One of the difficulties in fighting the pandemic is you keep having to adjust the strokes you play, the shots you play, depending on where the virus is and the effect it’s having in different localities,” he told reporters in central London.
It’s certainly true, as Chris Whitty and others have said, that it seems more localised, this time than it was in March and April - that’s how it has been anyway.
And we will be taking steps as you can imagine constantly to keep guidance, keep advice as simple as we can.
When there’s more to say on that we will certainly be saying it, but for now it’s follow the local rules in the areas which are under special restrictions, get on the website to look at what you need to do, but generally it’s all the restrictions that you know.
- He said that when a coronavirus vaccine became available, it would be offered first to the most vulnerable people first.
this morning. Photograph: Reuters
Updated
Sunak ends by stressing his pragmatism.
I will always be pragmatic.
The winter economy plan announced only two weeks ago is but the latest stage of our planned economic response.
I will keep listening, keep striving to be creative in response to the challenges our economy faces, and where I can, I will act.
I will not give up, no matter how difficult it is.
The British people and British businesses won’t give up.
I know this because of what I said at the beginning.
We share the same values.
The Conservative party and the country.
And these values are not devoid of meaning to people.
They are about protecting that which is meaningful to them.
Their family, their home, their job, their ability to choose for themselves what is best for them and those they love.
To create second chances, to see potential met, and to extend the awesome power of opportunity to all who seek it.
To answer questions of character with action not rhetoric.
To put the people first, their hopes and their aspirations.
And above all, to be worthy of the great trust they have placed in us.
Sunak claims Tory government 'will always balance the books'
Sunak turns to economic principles.
In a free market economy it is the entrepreneur, who is critical.
And we will make it easier for those with the ambition and appetite to take risks and be bold, to do what they do best and create jobs and growth.
And we will protect the public finances. Over the medium term getting our borrowing and debt back under control.
We have a sacred responsibility to future generations to leave the public finances strong, and through careful management of our economy, this Conservative government will always balance the books.
If instead we argue there is no limit on what we can spend, that we can simply borrow our way out of any hole, what is the point in us?
Sunak says extending opportunity is his priority
Sunak says extending opportunity is his main goal.
I have always said I couldn’t protect every job or every business. No chancellor could.
And even though I have said it, the pain of knowing it, only grows with each passing day.
So, I am committing myself to a single priority – to create, support and extend opportunity to as many people as I can.
Sunak lists the interventions introduced by the government, ending with the furlough scheme, “a first of its kind intervention in UK political history, delivered at scale, devised in rapid time, that protected millions of British families at the most acute stage of this crisis”.
He says the Conservatives “stood between the people and the danger”. But they did so with the help of the public, and he gives example of some model employers.
Sunak says the UK is “only part way through” the coronavirus crisis. The government has introduced “one of the most comprehensive and generous packages of support in the world”, he says.
And what the government did was based on Conservative values, he argues.
Conservatives believe in the importance of community and belonging.
We believe in personal responsibility and pragmatism.
We believe in the nobility of work and free enterprise.
And we believe in the unbreakable bond of union that unites the four nations of our United Kingdom.
Our values are old and true and have withstood tests of strife, of terror, and even war.
They are timeless because they are a wisdom earned over generations.
And they are universal, because they are rooted in the fundamental belief that individual freedom enables both the greatest achievement and the gentlest kindness.
People looked at us last December and saw this Conservative party.
They saw a party whose values and priorities were aligned with those of the British people.
Updated
Sunak pays tribute to Boris Johnson, as he did in his Sun interview. (See 10.47am.) He says:
I’ve seen up close the burden the prime minister carries.
We all know he has an ability to connect with people in a way few politicians manage.
It is a special and rare quality.
But what the commentators don’t see, the thing I see, is the concern and care he feels, every day, for the wellbeing of the people of our country.
Yes, it’s been difficult, challenges are part of the job, but on the big calls, in the big moments, Boris Johnson has got it right and we need that leadership.
Updated
Rishi Sunak's speech to Tory online conference
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is starting his speech to the Conservative party’s online conference.
He starts by thanking colleagues, supporters and constituents who have backed him. This is his first speech to a Tory conference as chancellor.
Johnson urges people to support local cinemas
Boris Johnson has urged people to support their local cinemas. Speaking at an event in London, prompted by the Cineworld closures, he said:
Obviously we hope to reduce, to keep the numbers of people who lose their jobs down as much as we can, but clearly there are going to be tough times ahead.
That’s why we’ve already invested £190bn in supporting jobs, livelihoods around the country.
Supporting local cinemas - I think we’ve already put £30m in, but what I would say to people is that local cinemas do now have ways of making their shows go on in a Covid-secure way and I’d encourage people to go out to the cinema, enjoy themselves and support those businesses.
This is from Prof Tim Spector, giving the latest figures from the Covid symptom study (CSS) survey of coronavirus infection in England.
The ONS infection survey published on Friday had the number of new community cases of coronavirus in England (ie, excluding hospital cases) running at around 8,400 per day. But those figures were for the week ending 24 September. The CSS figures are more recent.
Our CSS U.K. infection survey based on swab tests is holding steady for last few days in England at around 15000 cases per day and looks more reliable than govt data on confirmed cases - see app for full details . Keep logging and sharing pic.twitter.com/Q9YQEGSWH3
— tim spector (@timspector) October 5, 2020
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This is from my colleague Peter Walker, who has been watching an event at the online Conservative conference fringe.
Matt Hancock just spoke at @Policy_Exchange Tory virtual fringe event. Chair said, "All questions welcome". He then ignored the many posted questions about the test and trace fiasco, including the one 'most recommended' by viewers. How odd. All felt very... cosy. pic.twitter.com/6BKG96xm6E
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) October 5, 2020
There is an urgent question in the Commons at 3.30pm on Post Office prosecutions, which means the Matt Hancock statement on the almost 16,000 positive test results were not disclosed to test and trace, or published in the figures will start at around 4.30pm.
One UQ at 330pm:@KevanJonesMP to ask @AlokSharma_RDG to make a statement on the 44 Post Office prosecutions overturned by the CCRC
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) October 5, 2020
One Statement around 430pm:
Covid-19 update - @MattHancock / @JonAshworth
A survey of Conservative party members published by the ConservativeHome website at the weekend found that they rate Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, as the best-performing member of the cabinet, by quite a large margin. Boris Johnson came second bottom, with only Gavin Williamson seen as worse.
Sunak is ambitious but it is never a good idea to outshine the boss too conspicuously and, in an interview with the Sun today, he lavishes praise on the prime minister. Sunak says that, behind his “boundless optimism”, Johnson has “a deep seriousness of purpose and a deep desire to get this right”.
Sunak goes on:
I sit in these meetings, I see what [Johnson] grapples with. I see all the same information and these are not easy decisions to make.
They are awful trade-offs, they’re difficult decisions and he does it every single day driven entirely by this desire to protect people’s well-being. The fact that he can do it and maintain that sense of optimism is extraordinary.
In the interview Sunak also suggests that he is sceptical of the compulsory 10pm closing time for pubs, which he describes as “frustrating”, and he defends his eat out to help out scheme - which Johnson conceded yesterday may have contributed to the rise in coronavirus cases.
Sunak said that the scheme helped 2m people in the hospitality industry - “an industry that I care deeply about because of employment” - and that even though the scheme was most widely used in the south west of England, new Covid cases in that region were low.
In Tory leadership contests it is always useful to know who is winning the Rupert Murdoch primary and, according to Politico, Sunak is top in that league at the moment, having impressed the media tycoon and Sun owner over drinks recently.
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Long Covid 'could be bigger public health problem' than deaths, says thinktank
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change thinktank has published a paper (pdf) claiming that long Covid (the term for people who suffer long-term after-effects after getting infected) could turn out to be a bigger public health problem than the straightforward Covid death toll.
The claim is made in the foreword which has been written by Prof Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and one of the leaders of the Covid symptom study, which uses an app (uploaded more than 4m times) to track symptoms. He writes:
Over 4m people gave us their data, and this has provided unique insights not available from the routine health statistics. The first insight after a few weeks was that loss of smell was by far the single best predictor of Covid-19, in addition to a positive swab test ...
The other insight was that a great many people didn’t get better after two weeks as expected. We kept following them and found out that a significant number still had problems after months. This is the other side of Covid: the long-haulers that could turn out to be a bigger public-health problem than excess deaths from Covid-19, which mainly affect the susceptible elderly.
Here is an extract from the report seeking to back up this claim.
New findings from the study ... indicate that around 10 per cent of those taking part in the survey had symptoms of long Covid for a month, with between 1.5 and 2 per cent still experiencing them after three months.
Extrapolating from this, the researchers believe that of those affected by the first wave of the virus in the UK, 300,000 people would have had Covid symptoms for a month and 60,000 for three months or more.
Properly understanding the scope and scale of the issue of long Covid is critical in both communicating and balancing the overall risk of the virus, particularly as governments determine their next steps in containing Covid-19 and avoiding a full lockdown ...
Long Covid is likely a bigger issue than excess deaths as a result of Covid, which are between 0.5 per cent and 1 per cent.
And this is what the report says about who seems most likely to suffer from long Covid.
Patterns in the Covid symptom study suggest that long Covid was about twice as common in women as in men and that the average age of someone presenting with it was about four years older than people who had what might be labelled as “short Covid”. The median age for someone suffering with long Covid is 45.
Young people can be long-haulers too: A study from the US found that in addition to adults and those with chronic conditions reporting long-term symptoms, one in five people aged between 18 and 34 who do not suffer from chronic medical conditions reported cases of long Covid after their initial infection.
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Sky’s Ed Conway posted an useful thread on Twitter last night about the omission of almost 16,000 positive test results from the official figures. It starts here.
Leaving aside the implications for what we know about the spread of #COVID19, which we'll get to in a second, THIS, simply as a story about management of data, is astounding. At one of the most crucial points in the pandemic tens of thousands of positive cases were underreported. pic.twitter.com/oEG5ou14dJ
— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) October 4, 2020
In his London Playbook briefing for Politico Europe, Alex Wickham has some detail about what actually went wrong.
WHAT WENT WRONG: The problem occurred when test result data from labs wasn’t successfully transferred onto the actual dashboards that report the numbers. PHE says some files containing positive test results — unbelievably — exceeded the maximum file size that can be loaded onto their central system, and so they were missed. It’s now splitting the large files into two so it doesn’t happen again. Seriously.
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Labour says Cineworld closures show why ministers should be protecting shut-down businesses
Labour is suggesting that the government is partly responsible for Cineworld temporarily closing its cinemas in the UK and the US, with more than 5,000 workers in Britain potentially affected. This is from Jo Stevens, the shadow culture secretary.
This is devastating news for Cineworld workers and cinema goers, and will have a knock on impact on towns and city centres.
The cinema industry was viable before the crisis and will be afterwards, when the film industry recovers. The failure of ministers to recognise the value of shut-down businesses, which now includes many cinemas, means they are consigning thousands of workers to the scrapheap.
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Only half of population likely to get vaccine, says taskforce head
Good morning. It’s already looking like a busy day - we’re getting reaction to news that almost 16,000 positive test results were not disclosed to test and trace, or published in the figures, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is delivering his speech later to the online Tory conference and Cineworld is closing all its UK cinemas - but it is also worth flagging up a revealing interview in the Financial Times. Many people have been hoping that when a vaccine becomes available, that will be the wonder development that allows life to return to normal.
But the FT has been speaking to Kate Bingham, head of the government’s UK vaccine taskforce, and she said that if or when a vaccine does become available, less than half the population is likely to get it. In their story (paywall) Anna Gross and Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe report:
Kate Bingham told the Financial Times that vaccinating everyone in the country was “not going to happen”, adding: “We just need to vaccinate everyone at risk” ...
Ms Bingham said the government was aiming to vaccinate about 30m people, compared with a UK population of about 67m, if a successful vaccine against Covid-19 was found.
“People keep talking about ‘time to vaccinate the whole population’, but that is misguided,” she said.
“There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable” ...
Ms Bingham said vaccination policy would be aimed at those “most at risk” and noted that vaccinating healthy people, who are much less likely to have severe outcomes from Covid-19, “could cause them some freak harm”, potentially tipping the scales in terms of the risk-benefit analysis.
Bingham also told the FT that, if a vaccine turned out to be 95% effective, then it could be used more widely. But that would be a decision for later, she said.
Monday’s Financial Times: “Vaccinating all of UK ‘not going to happen’, warns task force head”#BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/wVYmVMU5gM
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) October 4, 2020
Here is the agenda for the day.
11.50am: Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, delivers his speech to the Conservative party’s online conference. Other speakers today include Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, at 11am; Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, at 1.30pm; George Eustice, the environment secretary, at 2pm; Alok Sharma, the business secretary, at 2.30pm: and Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, at 3.30pm.
12pm: Downing Street lobby briefing.
12.15pm: Vaughan Gething, the Welsh government’s health minister, holds a coronavirus briefing.
12.30pm: The Scottish government is due to hold its daily coronavirus briefing.
2.30pm: Penny Mordaunt, a Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence to the Commons European scrutiny committee about the implementation of the Brexit Northern Ireland protocol.
3.30pm: Matt Hancock, the health secretary is due to give a Commons statement on the 16,000 positive coronavirus test results not disclosed to NHS Test and Trace.
Politics Live has been doubling up as the UK coronavirus live blog for some time and, given the way the Covid crisis eclipses everything, this will continue for the foreseeable future. But we will be covering non-Covid political stories too, and where they seem more important and interesting, they will take precedence.
Here is our global coronavirus live blog.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
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