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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Yohannes Lowe (now) and Alexandra Topping (earlier)

UK coronavirus: unions call for phased school return; 1 in 115 people in England had Covid last week - as it happened

A woman pushes a pram past Mossley C of E primary in Congleton, England.
A woman pushes a pram past Mossley C of E primary in Congleton, England. Photograph: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images

Early evening summary

  • The Government said a further 533 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Friday, bringing the UK total to 119,920 (See 4.18pm).
  • Boris Johnson should implement a “phased return” of school and college pupils to classrooms in England or risk another spike in Covid infections, according to a coalition of education unions (See 2.59pm).
  • The UK’s R number is between 0.6 and 0.9, according to the latest government estimates (See 1.57pm).
  • First Minister Mark Drakeford has said the Welsh government is able to make “modest changes” to lockdown rules, allowing four people from two different homes to exercise together from Saturday, while weddings can resume from next week (See 1.01pm). Primary schoolchildren in Wales will return to face-to-face teaching from 15 March if the coronavirus situation in the country “continues to improve”, he also said (See 09.19am).
  • The high court has ruled that the government acted unlawfully by failing to disclose details of its Covid contracts. The Good Law Project had launched a judicial review against the Department of Health and Social Care (See 12.45pm).
  • Around one in 115 people in private households in England had Covid-19 between 6 and 12 February, according to new ONS estimates (See 12.19pm).

That’s all from me for today. But our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog here:

Paul Edwards, director of clinical services at Dementia UK, said (see earlier post):

Whilst the introduction of the vaccines alongside other infection control measures, such as social distancing, PPE and handwashing, are essential tools in managing the pandemic for residents and staff in care homes, it is still the case that the impact of the pandemic is very mixed across the UK. People with dementia and their families have been significantly hit by this pandemic. It is essential that we have proper clinical plans which manage and mitigate risk, but at the same time provide hope and a way forwards for those many residents and families who are desperate to be re-united. Public health, care home providers and families need to work as one to reduce transmission rates and bring families back together.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, acted unlawfully by failing to publish multibillion-pound Covid-19 government contracts within the 30-day period required by law, a high court judge has ruled.

The judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, ruled the failure to do so breached the “vital public function” of transparency over how “vast quantities” of taxpayers’ money was being spent, the Guardian’s David Conn writes:

London is significantly behind in the race to immunise older people, with several areas in the capital reporting that one in three people aged 70 and over have not yet received a first dose of the vaccine, according to a Guardian analysis.

Niamh McIntyre, Caelainn Barr and Niko Kommenda report:

Some of these areas have large black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) populations and high levels of deprivation, prompting concerns that the NHS is failing to reach marginalised groups.

The Central London clinical commissioning group (CCG), which covers the Westminster area, had given a first dose of the vaccine to just over 60% of residents aged 70 and over by 14 February, significantly less than the national rate of 94.5%.

West London, Tower Hamlets, Newham and City and Hackney CCGs also reported levels below 75%. By contrast the percentage of people aged 70 and above in North East Hampshire & Farnham CCG who’d had a first jab was 99.8%.

Updated

Care home deaths in England were at or above levels seen in the first wave at the start of this month, documents have revealed.

My colleague Nicola Davis reports:

The Consensus Statement on Covid-19 from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) dated 3 February, and released on Friday, stated:

Confirmed Covid-19 deaths in care homes in England currently continue to increase and are at or above levels seen in the first wave in spring 2020.

The document adds that it is in such residential settings that the impact of the vaccination programme is hoped to become apparent in testing data within the following two to three weeks. The team wrote:

It is estimated that the care home population has approximately 25% naturally acquired immunity, apparently clustered in care homes that have reported Covid-19 mortality, indicating the importance of immunisation.

Jayne Connery, the director of Care Campaign for the Vulnerable, said the death toll is not a surprise. She said:

We have been supporting families through this Covid crisis from day one and the government have failed to prioritise the elderly right from the beginning, and our carers.

Connery said the campaign is still hearing from family members of those in care homes that their loved ones are contracting Covid, despite family visits often not being allowed and vaccinations being done.

Connery said many providers had “shut shop, and they are not allowing families in” but care workers and other staff were still coming and going.

Connery said Covid vaccinations are crucial, including a second jab.

We need to get people back to seeing their loved ones, and I think that is a priority.

Updated

UK records 533 deaths within 28 days of a positive test

The UK has recorded a further 533 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test, and a further 12,027 cases (a 20.3% decrease on the last seven days).

Another 1,490 people were admitted to hospital, while 560,400 tests were conducted.

People vaccinated up to and including 18 February 2021:

First dose: 16,875,536

Second dose: 589,591

Estimated R number

0.6 to 0.9 with a daily infection growth rate range of -6% to -3% as of 19 February 2021.

Police forces have reported an increase in large illegal lockdown parties in recent weeks, as streams of reports from members of the public expose popup events organised in secret via social media, report my colleagues Jessica Murray and Alex Mistlin.

Stuart Bill, bronze commander for Operation Reliant, a dedicated West Midlands police taskforce for tackling significant Covid breaches, said:

We’re coming across bigger events at the moment. We’re seeing house parties and events in warehouses and derelict buildings, but finding them can be tricky.

Organisers are sophisticated, they’re alive to the fact we will monitor social media, so [they promote] on closed platforms like Snapchat and WhatsApp. Most of our intelligence comes from the public.

Last Saturday, following a tip off from someone who saw taxis dropping people off outside a building in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, the operation disrupted 150 people at an illegal nightclub spread over two floors, featuring a VIP area and DJ, the same night they uncovered a makeshift pub – “The Covid Arms” – in a converted garage workshop with 12 people drinking inside.

Updated

A three-month gap between doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine results in higher vaccine efficacy than a six-week gap, a new study suggests.

The research indicates that with three months between the first and second dose there was an overall efficacy of 81%, compared to 55% for a six-week interval, PA Media reports.

The first dose offered 76% protection in the three months between doses, according to the University of Oxford research published in The Lancet.

This summit clip was shared by Sky News’ political correspondent Joe Pike:

Some reaction to the coalition of education union’s warning on a “phased return” to schools from Sian Griffiths, the education and families editor at the Sunday Times:

Updated

Unions call for 'phased return' of English schools to avoid Covid spike

The prime minister should opt for a “phased return” of school and college pupils to classrooms in England or risk another spike in Covid infections, a coalition of education unions has warned.

Unions representing school and college staff and headteachers are “increasingly concerned” that the government could go ahead with a full return of all pupils in England on 8 March, according to PA Media.

A joint statement says:

This would seem a reckless course of action. It could trigger another spike in Covid infections, prolong the disruption of education and risk throwing away the hard-won progress made in suppressing the virus over the course of the latest lockdown. The science around the role that schools play in the overall rate of transmission is uncertain.

It adds: “What we do know is that the full reopening of schools will bring nearly 10 million pupils and staff into circulation in England - close to one fifth of the population. This is not a small easing of lockdown restrictions. It is a massive step.

“These factors necessitate a cautious approach with wider school and college opening phased over a period of time.”

Updated

Johnson has told world leaders:

Science is finally getting the upper hand on Covid which is a great, great thing and long overdue. But there is no point in us vaccinating our individual populations – we’ve got to make sure the whole world is vaccinated because this is a global pandemic and it’s no use one country being far ahead of another, we’ve got to move together. So one of the things that I know that colleagues will be wanting to do is to ensure that we distribute vaccines at cost around the world – make sure everybody gets the vaccines that they need so that the whole world can come through this pandemic together.

Updated

PA Media reports:

Boris Johnson also urged the G7 leaders to work together on “building back better” from the pandemic.

The prime minister said it was a slogan that US president Joe Biden has used, adding: “I think he may have nicked it from us but I certainly nicked it from somewhere else - probably some UN disaster relief programme.”

Mr Biden could be seen laughing on the video call on the screen inside the Cabinet Room.

Mr Johnson continued: “I think that this is the right moment for us all to focus on the other great natural challenge about which we’ve been warned time and time and time again.

“We can’t ignore it - the warnings have been even clearer than they were for Covid - and that is the problem of climate change, and that’s why we’re going to be working very hard to get some great things done at G7 on our plans for the Cop26 summit that we are holding along with our Italian friends in Glasgow in November.

“It’s great, by the way, that Joe (Biden) has brought the United States back into the Paris Climate Change Accords - a great step forward.”

The G7 summit is under way (see earlier post).

Boris Johnson has urged world leaders to work together to ensure the whole globe is vaccinated against coronavirus.

Addressing the virtual meeting from 10 Downing Street, Johnson said:

Science is finally getting the upper hand on Covid, which is a great, great thing and long overdue. But there is no point in us vaccinating our individual populations – we’ve got to make sure the whole world is vaccinated because this is a global pandemic and it’s no use one country being far ahead of another, we’ve got to move together. So, one of the things that I know that colleagues will be wanting to do is to ensure that we distribute vaccines at cost around the world – make sure everybody gets the vaccines that they need so that the whole world can come through this pandemic together.

Updated

Vaccine passports are feasible, according to scientists at the Royal Society, but many pressing questions need to be answered around their use, from knowing whether vaccines protect people against transmitting coronavirus, to ensuring they do not lead to widespread discrimination and inequalities.

Here is the full story from Sarah Boseley, the Guardian’s health editor:

The NHS England data shows a total of 1,706,333 jabs were given to people in London between 8 December and 18 February, including 1,640,550 first doses and 65,783 second doses.

This compares with 2,728,604 first doses and 74,703 second doses given to people in the Midlands, a total of 2,803,307.

The breakdown for the other regions, as reported by PA Media, is:

  • East of England - 1,698,521 first doses and 61,877 second doses, making 1,760,398 in total
  • North-east and Yorkshire - 2,231,603 first and 85,548 second doses (2,317,151)
  • North-west - 1,872,065 first and 70,449 second doses (1,942,514)
  • South-east - 2,323,412 first and 87,580 second doses (2,410,992)
  • South-west - 1,648,929 first and 58,445 second doses (1,707,374)

Updated

A total of 14,718,938 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 18 February, according to provisional NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 400,823 on the previous day’s figures.

Of this number, 14,214,176 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 396,262 on the previous day, while 504,762 were a second dose, an increase of 4,561, according to PA Media.

UK's R number remains below 1

The R number across the UK is between 0.6 and 0.9, according to the latest government figures.

Last week, it was between 0.7 and 0.9.

The R value - the coronavirus reproduction number - represents the average number of people each person with Covid-19 goes on to infect.

A figure below 1 implies the epidemic is shrinking.

An R number between 0.6 and 0.9 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between six and nine further people.

The lower end of the UK’s coronavirus R estimate is 0.6 - which is the lowest R range seen since the government first started publishing the figures in May 2020.

But Sage has warned that prevalence of the virus “remains high” and that “it remains vital that everyone continues to stay at home in order to keep the R value down, protect the NHS and help save lives”.

Updated

This from the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent Libby Brooks:

Travel restrictions could be enforced to prevent people from areas with high levels of coronavirus coming into Wales when the tourism sector is allowed to reopen, the first minister, Mark Drakeford, has indicated.

At present, travel in and out of Wales is only allowed for essential purposes.

Drakeford told a press conference:

The border is not the issue, the issue is trying to make sure that coronavirus doesn’t get seeded again in low incidence areas. So as we move ahead and as we get to the point where we are able to resume travel in Wales, that will be one of the principles that we will use to make those decisions and if it’s necessary, to enforce those decisions. If we had wide disparities between the position we face in Wales and the position elsewhere, then we will act again to make sure that low incidence areas in Wales do not face influxes of people from areas where travelling to Wales would mean bringing the virus with you.

Updated

Scotland’s deputy first minister, John Swinney, has urged parents not to mingle and meet up with friends at school gates or allow play-dates indoors as younger children return to the classroom next week.

He said that early primary children were being prioritised in the phased return to education because evidence showed that they struggled most to engage with remote learning.

Swinney confirmed that 2,500 schools had now received lateral flow testing kits for voluntary use by staff and senior pupils, some of whom are also returning next week for practical assignments.

Swinney was also asked if there was better news about Easter holidays – Nicola Sturgeon said earlier this week that they were “highly unlikely” to be allowed – given the growing optimism around the vaccine’s ability to reduce transmission. He said that “extreme caution” was still demanded in any easing of lockdown.

Swinney said:

I wouldn’t separate the Easter holidays from all the other judgments the government is making … We need sustained, relentless pressure to reduce the prevalence of the virus.

Updated

Here is the latest from the ONS (read its full analysis here):

'Modest changes' to lockdown rules in Wales, first minister confirms

On the “very modest changes” to lockdown restrictions in Wales (see up from earlier post), the first minister, Mark Drakeford, has since told a press conference:

Sport Wales will now make arrangements for more of our talented athletes to be able to resume training and playing. Next week, we will change the law to allow licensed wedding venues, such as visitor attractions and hotels to reopen, but only for the purpose of performing weddings and civil partnerships. And as more people are living and working in care homes with the vaccine having been delivered, we will look again at the most difficult and challenging issue - how to allow more visits in care homes to take place, provided it can be done safely.

It has also been confirmed that as many as four people from two different homes will be able to exercise together from Saturday in Wales.

Updated

High court rules government acted unlawfully by not disclosing Covid contract details

The high court has ruled that the government acted unlawfully by failing to disclose details of its Covid contracts. We will have a full report on this later.

Updated

A message to the prime minister from Anna McMorrin, the shadow international development minister and Labour MP for Cardiff North:

North-west England had the highest proportion of people of any region in England likely to test positive for coronavirus, the ONS said.

About one in 85 people in private households in the North-west were estimated to have had Covid-19 in the week ending 12 February, PA Media reports.

For London the estimate was one in 100, and for the West Midlands it was one in 110.

The other estimates are one in 120 people for the east Midlands and for Yorkshire and the Humber; one in 125 people for eastern England; and one in 135 for north-east England, south-east England and south-west England.

Updated

1 in 115 people in England had Covid last week , down from 1 in 80 the week before

Around one in 115 people in private households in England had Covid-19 between 6 and 12 February, according to new estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

This is down from around one in 80 people for the period 31 January to 6 February.

In Wales, around one in 125 people are estimated to have had Covid-19 between 6 and 12 February - down from the previous ONS estimate of one in 85 for 31 January to 6 February.

In Northern Ireland, the ONS estimates around one in 105 people had Covid-19 between 6 and 12 February, down from one in 75.

The estimate for Scotland is around one in 180 people, down from one in 150.

Updated

The number of Covid-related deaths registered in Northern Ireland has fallen for a third week, the BBC reports.

The NI Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) said the virus was mentioned on the death certificates of 99 people, in the week ending 12 February – 27 fewer than the previous week.

It brings the total number of Covid-related deaths in Northern Ireland to 2,673, according to Nisra’s calculations.

Updated

This important thread is from Dr Paul Williams, an NHS doctor and Labour candidate for Cleveland police and crime commissioner:

Updated

Millions of people are out of pocket on flights they were unable to board due to Covid restrictions, according to consumer group Which?.

Holidaymakers prevented from flying by travel restrictions or lockdowns may not be entitled to a refund, the group said.

This is from the shadow education minister Toby Perkins, who is the Labour MP for Chesterfield:

Updated

Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, has said it is still not clear how much impact vaccines are having on transmission.

Prof Finn, of the University of Bristol, told BBC Radio 4 there is still insufficient data on “overall transmission within the population”.

“The age group that we’ve immunised so far, the elderly, are probably not the primary spreaders,” he explained.

They’re people who are already taking quite a lot of precautions to protect themselves and are not mixing that much within the population... It’s the younger age groups who still are, or still have to, in order to work.

The first minister, Mark Drakeford, said there were no plans to reopen gyms in Wales at present due to advice from scientists that the Kent Covid variant made doing so “more challenging” (see his earlier comments from here).

Drakeford told the PA Media news agency:

The advice that I have seen from our scientific community is that the Kent variant, which is so much more transmissible, makes gyms a more challenging sector to reopen than before the Kent variant took hold. So, I’m afraid there isn’t a prospect that gyms and leisure centres and so on will open by the middle of March, and it may be some while after that before we can safely return to doing so, at least indoors and in the conventional way.

Updated

PA Media reports:

A coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech is 85% effective at preventing people developing Covid-19 symptoms after the first dose, a study of Israeli healthcare workers has shown.

The findings, published in the journal Lancet, appear to provide reassurance about the UK’s decision to delay the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine - given the high level of protection from the first shot - in order to increase the number of people getting the jab.

The scientists also found that all infections, including those without symptoms, were reduced by 75% after the first dose.

More than 7,000 healthcare workers at the Sheba Medical Centre in Israel - the country’s largest hospital - were involved in the study.

No guarantee this Covid lockdown will be England's last, says minister

The government cannot guarantee that the current lockdown in England will be the last, a minister has said.

The Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said it was impossible to give the public “100% certainty” because “viruses don’t work like that”.

While lockdown restrictions and the rapid vaccine rollout were having an impact, Cleverly added that “no one can predict with complete certainty” what the virus will do and how it will evolve, my colleague Lucy Campbell reports.

Read her full story here:

Prof Neil Ferguson, whose data modelling led to the first UK lockdown, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the “downside of taking bigger risks is you risk having to lock down again which is even more disruptive economically and socially”.

He added:

I am encouraged by the cautious approach being taken, an incremental approach which I think will be adopted, namely relax one thing and see what the impact is, relax again. And it still may well be that by the end of May, we’re in a very different country than we are today.

This is from the shadow transport secretary, Jim McMahon, the Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton:

Updated

Keir Starmer’s vision for the economy is something Labour can rally around, according to Sienna Rodgers, editor of LabourList:

Sadiq Khan has insisted there should be no return to the tiering system in place before the current lockdown in England.

The mayor of London told the PA news agency:

I think the government’s tiering system hasn’t worked, it has been a catastrophic failure and that’s why I think we need to look towards the country as a whole. The reality is what we can’t do is lift lockdown because we’ve seen good progress in one part of the country, which inadvertently leads to a lack of progress in another part of the country. I think we’ve got to learn the lessons of the mistakes made in the past.

This thread is from the BBC’s Nick Robinson:

Global health authorities should aim to swiftly distribute four billion doses of vaccine worldwide, according to a professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London, Sir Michael Marmot.

He told Times Radio:

Worldwide we probably ought to be aiming for about four billion doses of vaccine quickly. Four billion because we want 20% of the world’s population to have two doses, 20% in each country. We’re hoping in the end to vaccinate everyone in Britain, but if we manage it, what’s that going to be 100 million doses? It’s a drop in the bucket. We need really to be gearing up, scaling up, and Covax is the potential vehicle for doing it... on a mass scale to get vaccine out to the global population. I think we ought to be dealing with the global population almost as if it were at home.

“One of the things Covax needs is money, it probably needs about another $4bn, which in the scale of expenditure of what has gone in the pandemic is not huge, and rich countries could easily stump up that,” Marmot added.

Updated

The number of people allowed to exercise together in Wales will increase from two to four, the first minister, Mark Drakeford, has said.

Drakeford told BBC Radio Wales that people had to live in the same area and could only begin their exercise “from their own front doors” and return home, as stay-at-home rules still apply.

On stay-at home restrictions, he said:

I hope that this will be the last three weeks of the strict, straight, stay-at-home requirement. So if in three weeks time the numbers are still falling, the positivity rate is falling, the R number is below one, hospital pressures continue to reduce, then I hope we’ll be able to move beyond stay at home.

Updated

Sadiq Khan was interviewed on Sky News after receiving his first Covid vaccine dose:

The Foreign Office minister James Cleverly has been doing the media rounds this morning.

Asked when the UK would be in a position to share extra vaccines with poorer countries (see earlier post), he told Today:

There are a number of variables, some of which are in our control. The speed of vaccinating our own people for example, which is going very well... other variables include when vaccines get the green light by regulators and how quickly the companies can produce those vaccines. We’re not really able to give with certainty either a timescale or the numbers involved.

“Our first duty is to protect our own people, that is the first duty of all governments, but we are also a global force for good and that’s why we’re leading the world in calls to ensure that the poorer countries in the world are also made safe,” Cleverly added.

Updated

UK retail sales plunged in January as vast swathes of high street stores kept their doors shut in the latest national lockdown, new figures show.

The Office for National Statistics said retail sales volumes dived 8.2% last month against December 2020 after non-essential retailers shut their doors to customers.

It was significantly worse than analyst expectations, with a consensus of economists predicting a 2.5% decline for the month, according to PA Media.

Difficult times for retailers in Oxford Street as the third lockdown continues., Oxford street, London, UK - 16 Feb 2021.
Difficult times for retailers in Oxford Street as the third lockdown continues. Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

Urging caution around any reopening, the infectious diseases expert Dr Mike Tildesley told BBC Breakfast:

We do know any form of reopening will cause the R number to go up so that needs very very careful monitoring. The vaccination campaign is going very, very well ... but where we need to be careful is if we open too quickly and don’t allow the vaccination programme to help us along the way, we run the issue of things resurging a little bit.

Updated

UK guidance on personal protective equipment is “inadequate” and continues to put healthcare workers’ lives at risk from airborne transmission of Covid-19 and in the face of new variants, health organisations have warned.

Read the full story here first:

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has received his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine:

Updated

“Self-contained” holiday accommodation in Wales could reopen in time for the Easter period, first Minister Mark Drakeford has said.

Drakeford told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

I met our tourism taskforce yesterday, we’ll be having some detailed discussions with them now over the next couple of weeks to see if there’s anything that we might be able to do around the Easter period. The most that would be would be the reopening of self-contained accommodation where there aren’t shared facilities and there isn’t social mixing.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Drakeford said on the reopening details:

I don’t believe it will be a wholesale reopening, we are going to do things in the way that Sage and the WHO recommend - carefully, step-by-step, always assessing the impact of any actions that we take. But if it is possible from 15 March to begin the reopening of some aspects of non-essential retail and personal services such as hairdressing then of course that is what we would want to do.

Updated

Pupils in Wales set to return to primary schools on 15 March

Primary schoolchildren in Wales will return to face-to-face teaching from 15 March if the coronavirus situation in the country “continues to improve”, the first minister has said.

Mark Drakeford will announce on Friday that there will be no further significant changes to the country’s lockdown, with an extension of at least another three weeks to allow for a safe return to school for the youngest pupils from Monday, my colleague Lucy Campbell reports.

Updated

Boris Johnson to pledge surplus vaccines will be donated to poorer nations

Good morning everyone. I will be running the blog today so feel free to drop me a message on Twitter with any coverage suggestions.

Boris Johnson will lead efforts to fend off accusations that the world’s richest countries are hoarding Covid vaccines by pledging at a G7 summit today that the UK will donate surplus doses to poorer countries.

Johnson, who is chairing the first meeting of the G7 attended by new US president Joe Biden, will commit to sharing the majority of any future surplus coronavirus jabs from its supply with the Covax vaccine-sharing programme to support developing countries.

He will also use the meeting, which will be led via video-link, to deliver a target of cutting the time to develop new vaccines by two-thirds to 100 days.

Johnson confirmed he has asked Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, to work with international partners, including the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to advise the G7 on speeding up the process for developing vaccines, treatments and tests for common pathogens.

Speaking to Times Radio this morning, foreign office minister James Cleverly said:

We’ve made a very principled and correct decision that the best way of deciding the distribution of the bulk of the vaccine to the world should be done through multilateral bodies rather than using what is potentially a life-saving drug as some form of diplomatic leverage. So we’ve decided to go through Covax which is the international body that will decide the best and most equitable distribution.

On the domestic front, some of the papers are again leading on the proposals under consideration for the easing of curbs, as well as the vaccination effort.

The Daily Mail reports that people over 40 will begin to be offered a coronavirus vaccine by the end of March, saying that government advisers are set to recommend widening jab lists and focus offers on the basis of age.

The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, reports that coronavirus vaccines appear to cut Covid transmissions and infections by two-thirds, adding that “real-world data” shows a “powerful effect” of jabs on the spread of the virus.

Here is the agenda for the day:

09.30: Covid social impacts weekly survey

12.00: Weekly UK Covid-19 infection survey from the ONS

14.00: PM hosts virtual G7 meeting on vaccine distribution

15.30: Test & trace chief Baroness Harding briefing on rapid tests rollout

Here is our global coronavirus live blog for Covid-related news from around the world:

Updated

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