Summary
Here the latest developments at a glance:
- The UK reported 19,114 new cases on Friday, slightly down from yesterday’s 20,634, as well as a further 1,014 deaths from Covid-19.
- The Cabinet Office was right to say all adults aged 50 and over will have had a coronavirus vaccine by May, Downing Street said after initially dismissing the report.
- The government’s top scientific advisers warned last month that a “complete, pre-emptive closure of borders” was needed to fully prevent new coronavirus strains being imported into the UK.
- Around 1 in 65 people in the community in England are estimated to have had the disease in the week ending 30 January, compared with 1 in 70 in Wales, 1 in 65 in Northern Ireland and 1 in 115 in Scotland. The week before the figures were 1 in 55, 1 in 70, 1 in 50 and 1 in 110 respectively.
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London continues to have the highest proportion of people likely to test positive for coronavirus in any region of England, with around one in 50 people estimated to have the virus.
- The reproduction number, or R value, of coronavirus transmission across the UK is between 0.7 and 1, according to the latest government figures. Last week, it was between 0.7 and 1.1.
- The outcomes of targeted tests to track the South African coronavirus variant in England could take up to two weeks, public health officials have said.
- Health secretary Matt Hancock said it was “too early” to decide whether restrictions could be eased in March, and said there were no current plans to roll out vaccine passports for those who had received both jabs, despite a report to the contrary.
- The Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine could be as effective at fighting the UK variant as it is in fighting the original virus, new research suggests.
- Covid vaccines approved for use in the UK are safe, with the benefits of their use far outweighing any risks, the UK’s medicines regulator has said after examining new data.
- Education minister Kirsty Williams told the Welsh government briefing on Friday that children in the foundation stage of their schooling would return to school from February 22.
- Scotland saw largest daily number of vaccinations given since rollout began, as another 48,165 patients in Scotland had received a first dose of coronavirus vaccine by Friday morning.
That’s all from me, thanks for following along and writing in. This blog will close shortly – please follow the global coronavirus live blog for the latest updates.
Updated
SAGE advised government last month "complete" closure of borders was needed, minutes show
The government’s top scientific advisers warned last month that a “complete, pre-emptive closure of borders” was needed to fully prevent new coronavirus strains being imported into the UK.
PA reports:
Minutes from a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) held on 21 January revealed that the experts said the only other method of stopping any variants arriving was for all travellers to be quarantined in designated facilities.
Prime minister Boris Johnson announced six days later that only people arriving from countries on a “red list” will be required to self-isolate in a hotel for 10 days.
It was confirmed last night that this policy will not come into force until 15 February.
The advisers stated: “Evidence from the continued spread of the South African and UK variants suggests that reactive, geographically targeted travel bans cannot be relied upon to stop importation of new variants once identified, due to the time lag between the emergence and identification of variants of concern, and the potential for indirect travel via a third country.”
They added that requiring passengers to quarantine on arrival and test negative for coronavirus before they are released has the “most substantial potential effect on reducing the risk of infected arrivals”.
On Tuesday, the prime minister’s official spokesman said Sage “did not actually advise the government to completely close borders or call for a blanket quarantine on travels”.
Various MPs have repeatedly called on the government to publish the scientific evidence for keeping the borders open.
Last week, Alistair Carmichael, the MP for Orkney and Shetland, urged home secretary Priti Patel in the Commons to “bolster public confidence in her decision making by publishing the evidence” that informed the government’s hitherto introduced measures on Covid border safety.
Patel replied: “Throughout the pandemic, all decisions have been made by looking at scientific advice, and [Carmichael] will be well aware of that, and it is no different when it comes to protective measures at the border.
“He heard me speak about shutting the border when the mutant strain from Denmark was prevalent, and taking action around flights from South Africa and other countries, which was absolutely right. That was based on scientific advice, much of which has also been put out in the public domain.”
Updated
Results targeted at tracking South African variant in communities could take 2 weeks to come in
The outcomes of targeted tests to track the South African coronavirus variant in England could take up to two weeks, public health officials have said.
PA reports:
Any positive results will be sent for genome sequencing to identify the variant - a process which usually takes around a fortnight.
But Public Health England said the most recent tests rolled out in a number of areas of the country this week will be prioritised in a bid to speed up the process.
Door-to-door testing as part of urgent efforts to swab 80,000 people came after eleven cases of the variant were identified in the previous few days in people who had no links to travel - suggesting it may be spreading in communities.
Testing of around 10,000 people in the Maidstone area of Kent, which began on Tuesday, was completed on Thursday night.
Testing in Woking, Surrey was expected to finish on Friday.
Sefton Council said efforts to identify the variant in the Norwood area of Southport in Merseyside would continue into the weekend.
The testing in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, is being rolled out for another week until February 12, the council said.
Hundreds of test kits were given out in Tottenham, north London, when the testing rollout began there on Thursday and will continue into next week, a spokesman for Haringey Council said.
He added that “feedback has been really positive from residents”.
A West Midlands Combined Authority webinar was told on Friday that around 10,300 people in Walsall have been tested so far and some 560 tests had been conducted in the affected areas in Birmingham, with extra capacity being added in a two-week testing blitz.
Mobile testing units and home testing kits were also deployed this week to Hanwell, west London and Mitcham, south London.
Young people are at risk of becoming unemployable and turning to crime amid partial school closures and rising joblessness, in a spiral that could lead to social unrest, the crime commissioner for England’s second biggest force has warned.
Covid was “oiling the wheels of violence”, David Jamieson, the police and crime commissioner (PCC) for the West Midlands, said in an interview with the Guardian.
“I think we’ve got a tsunami, which we’re holding back at the moment. If we don’t address the issues of people coming off furlough and then just having nothing they can see as their future, we are in trouble. I think it will eventually result in some sort of social unrest.”
Jamieson added: “We’ve virtually gone now a year that some children have not really experienced schooling. Some may not want to go back to school after this, and that group of people are going to go through life probably unemployable … And that group of people is going to lose it.”
My colleague Jessica Murray reports.
Coronavirus mutations similar to those in the UK variant could arise in cases of chronic infection, where treatment over an extended period can provide the virus multiple opportunities to evolve, scientists say.
PA reports:
A team led by University of Cambridge researchers observed the virus mutating in the case of an immunocompromised patient treated with convalescent plasma.
They saw the emergence of a key mutation, also seen in the new variant, that led to the rapid spread of the virus before the country was forced into lockdown in January.
But there is no suggestion the variant originated from this patient.However, the researchers say the effect they observed is unlikely to occur in patients with functioning immune systems.
Using a synthetic version of the virus spike protein created in the lab, researchers showed that specific changes to its genetic code - the mutation seen in the B117 UK variant - made the virus twice as infectious on cells as the more common strain.
As the coronavirus replicates itself, its genetic code can be mis-transcribed, leading to errors, known as mutations.
Mutations that might change the structure of the spike protein, which sits on the surface of the virus, are are of particular concern.
UK researchers within the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium have identified a particular variant of the virus that includes important changes that appear to make it more infectious.
The health secretary said there were no current plans to roll out vaccine passports for those who had received both jabs.
Pressed on the matter by broadcasters, Matt Hancock said:
At the moment we have no plans for vaccine passports - and, anyway, going on holiday is illegal in this lockdown.
Of course, we’re constantly working with other countries and we keep these sorts of things under review, but for now there are still 31,670 people in hospital with Covid right now.
It’s imperative, that even with the good news on the vaccine and even with cases starting to fall, it’s imperative that everybody follows the rules and stays at home unless you absolutely have to leave.
I know there is good news out there but we still have very serious problems that we’ve got to get through.
'Too early' to say whether restrictions can be eased in March, Hancock says
Health secretary Matt Hancock said it was “too early” to decide whether restrictions could be partially lifted in March as the NHS is still under pressure.
Asked what may be able to open in March, he told a pool of broadcast reporters on Friday:
It is still too early to say that ... even though the vaccine programme is going great guns – almost 11 million people now have been vaccinated.
It is still too early to say and 31,670 people in hospital with Covid as we speak right now – that is far, far too many.
The NHS is still under pressure and we’ve all got to do our bit to keep those case rates coming down.
Hancock said the government would be “vigilant” about which countries would be subject to the forthcoming hotel quarantine rules.
Asked whether it needed to go further and expand the current “red list”, the health minister said:
We’ll be vigilant in making sure that the hotel quarantine that we’re introducing applies to the right countries where we see these new variants.
We have a programme to have surveillance right across the world, working with international partners to make sure we can spot where these new variants pop up, like Brazil and South Africa that we’ve seen so far, and make sure that we can keep people here safe with the new hotel quarantine.
Updated
The temporary mortuary set up at Birmingham airport has reopened due to a rise in Covid-19 deaths, West Midlands police said.
PA reports:
The facility, which originally opened in April last year, closed in September as coronavirus deaths reduced.
But the force said as infections rates have increased and hospital admissions have risen, the mortuary is reopening to take pressure off the NHS and relieve storage at hospitals.
Senior coroner Louise Hunt said: “Our thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones at this difficult time. I want to stress that dignity and respect for the deceased and the bereaved continues to be our primary consideration.
“The reopening of the temporary mortuary will not impact on our ability to provide the right level of service to all families and we remain focused on the humanitarian and faith needs of all those involved.
“We will continue to review the need for the temporary mortuary weekly.”
Updated
This just in from Sky News’ Aubrey Allegretti:
Matt Hancock in broadcast pool confirms: "My plan is that we should be able to offer a vaccine to everyone in categories 1-9 - that's all the over 50s - by May.
— Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti) February 5, 2021
"Lots of things have got to go right to hit that goal, especially supply which is the rate-limiting factor."
UK reports further 1,014 deaths
The UK reported 19,114 new cases on Friday, slightly down from yesterday’s 20,634.
The government announced a further 1,014 people had died from Covid-19.
Yesterday, a further 915 deaths had been reported.
Tributes have been made to a 29-year-old healthcare assistant who died with Covid-19 after giving birth to her fourth child.
Becky Regan, who worked at North Tyneside hospital from January 2020, was remembered by family and colleagues on Friday with a one-minute silence.
PA reports:
In a statement, James Mackey, chief executive of Northumbria hospitals NHS trust, said:
“It’s with deep sadness that we mourn the loss of one of our own team who has tragically died this week.
“This will be remembered as a very sad day for Northumbria and we are all devastated at the loss of our friend and colleague. Our deepest condolences are with the family at this tragic time.
“While every death during this pandemic has been a tragedy, the loss of Becky will feel especially painful having just given birth and her close family are now dealing with the worst possible news.
“Our thoughts are also with her close colleagues and those who treated her during her illness who will also be grieving her loss.”
A GoFundMe page was created by family and friends in January, while Regan was in hospital, to help her children.
The fundraising page has reached over £9,000.
Updated
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has written to education minister Gavin Williamson to urge him to reinstate special funding for London universities worth £64 million which the government has withdrawn as part of a stated commitment to rebalance education spend towards other regions.
A 2019 report by KPMG for the Department for Education suggested that higher education costs 14% more to deliver in the capital.
Khan stated in the letter:
Your letter has let slip the government’s mask on this – that the levelling up agenda is actually a front for levelling down London.
Levelling up is a critical challenge within London as it is across England as a whole. Our city is grappling with deep and entrenched inequalities.
Updated
Mark Harper, who chairs the Tory MP lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group (CRG), said it would be “almost impossible” to justify keeping restrictions in place beyond 6 May, given the most vulnerable will have been vaccinated by then.
The former minister said:
It’s great news that the local elections are going ahead on May 6 and that all over-50s will have been offered a chance to have had their all important first jab, providing the bulk of the protection against Covid, by that date too.
These top nine groups account for around 99% of those that have died from Covid and about 80% of hospital admissions.
It will be almost impossible to justify having any restrictions in place at all by that point.
He said lockdowns and restrictions cause “immense harm to people’s health and livelihoods”, and that by 8 March, when the most vulnerable in the top four priority groups were likely to have a high level of immunity from their vaccinations, the government “must start easing the restrictions”.
He added:
Given that Scotland and Wales have indicated that schools will start to open from 22 February, we need to know why English schools need to be kept shut for longer given the great news about the vaccination rollout and the impact every day outside the classroom and the playground has on children’s prospects, education and social development.
A further 537 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 74,786, NHS England said on Friday.
Patients were aged between 15 and 100. All except 21, aged between 45 and 98, had known underlying health conditions. The deaths were between 17 December and 4 February, with the majority being on or after 1 February.
There were 44 other deaths reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
Updated
The Oxford team said researchers in South Africa were still looking at how effective the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is against the strain first detected there, and also being spread in the UK.
PA Media reports:
Details of these studies will be published in due course.
Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca, said it would not be surprising to see reduced efficacy against this variant.
He explained: “I think it’s reasonable to say that what we know from other vaccines is we’re not going to be surprised to see reduced efficacy.
“Because we’ve seen from the J&J vaccines and from the Novavax vaccines that these variants do impact - at least in mild and moderate disease, or mild disease - efficacy.
“I think it’s to be expected there’ll be reduced activity.”
Updated
National Education Union (NEU) Cymru’s senior Wales officer Gareth Lloyd said education minister Kirsty Williams had taken a “sensible approach” in allowing a flexible return for pupils aged between three and seven after half term.
Lloyd said:
We have been clear, we believe that at least three planning days should be used after half term, with no learners in school, to give time for educators to help make the necessary plans for a safe return.
Our members want a wider return in a safe working environment and we are expecting discussions next week with Welsh Government to ensure robust mitigation measures are put in place.
Dilwyn Roberts-Young, general secretary of the UCAC teachers union, said:
We welcome the announcement of mitigating measures to further reduce risks, including regular testing for staff and investment in equipment and modifications.
However, the genuine concerns of teachers in the foundation phase about this return must be acknowledged. We urge local authorities and schools to take the local context into account in making their plans and encourage all concerned to consider a gradual, flexible return.
Laura Doel, director of school leaders union NAHT Cymru, said members were “bitterly disappointed” the decision had been imposed “whilst there are too many questions left unanswered”.
She said:
We have not been provided with the rationale for this decision or definitive scientific evidence to support what we consider to be the rushed and premature wider reopening of schools.
Updated
More on the vaccine passports the government may not be working on rolling out currently, but potentially later, the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Friday having coronavirus immunity passports was a “very sensible policy” and that other countries had shown how such schemes can work”.
Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s World At One:
I think it is a very sensible policy and I know that the government is looking at how that might work.
You need something that shows whether someone has had a vaccine and whether they have been tested recently.
And I think other parts of the world have shown how these schemes can work quite effectively.
Meanwhile, Jim McMahon, Labour’s shadow transport secretary, said:
Our priority at the moment must be to secure our borders against the threat of a mutation to the Covid that would undermine the vaccine.
Labour will look at proposals around helping to allow people to travel safely, but this must be led by the science.
A third review into the link between vitamin D and Covid has been ordered by the UK health secretary as more studies suggest that having low levels of the “sunshine hormone” raises the risk of death.
Matt Hancock has again asked the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which sets NHS England clinical guidelines, and Public Health England (PHE) to “re-review” their prior appraisals, after the authorities began “encouraging” people to take vitamin D supplements rather than merely “advising” it.
Nice has twice said there was not sufficient causal evidence to support the use of vitamin D in high doses in hospitals to treat or prevent the respiratory illness.
My colleague Mattha Busby reports.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and am now taking back over for the next few hours. Feel free to contact me with relevant comments and updates, I’m on Twitter @JedySays or you can email me.
The NHS England data shows a total of 1,127,062 jabs have been given to people in the South West between 8 December and 4 February, including 1,071,119 first doses and 55,943 second doses. This compares with 1,800,094 first doses and 70,800 second doses given to people in the Midlands, a total of 1,870,894. The breakdown for the other regions is as follows:
- East of England – 1,142,679 first doses and 56,745 second doses, making 1,199,424 in total
- London – 1,096,522 first doses and 61,274 second doses, making 1,157,796 in total
- North East and Yorkshire – 1,460,371 first doses and 75,767 second doses, making 1,536,138 in total
- North West – 1,301,047 first doses and 67,257 second doses, making 1,368,304 in total
- South East – 1,504,888 first doses and 80,655 second doses, making 1,585,543 in total
A total of 9,899,043 Covid-19 vaccinations had taken place in England between 8 December and 4 February, according to provisional NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 391,037 on the previous day’s figures.
Of this number, 9,430,261 were the first dose of the vaccine, a rise of 388,426 on the previous day’s figures, while 468,782 were the second dose, an increase of 2,611.
Parents of older pupils in Wales are likely to hear when their children may go back to school when the results of the next three-weekly review is announced on 19 February.
The education minister Kirsty Williams also said it was important to start thinking ahead to the autumn and winter terms and look at issues such as whether the summer holidays should be shortened to allow a longer “firebreak” half term and longer Christmas holidays.
I think it’s important we try to take a longer term view that allows us to plan more effectively. We know if we can take those decisions in advance it gives more time for professionals and families to plan. We do need to have those discussions. There is a seasonality element to Covid-19. Therefore, we have to think about what the autumn and winter will look like.
Vaccinating teachers appears to be off the table for the moment, with Williams insisting the government would stick to the priority groups laid out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. She said:
When you’re part of a government that has set up an independent group of experts to provide advice on how to roll out a vaccination programme, it would be very strange to ignore that advice.
And Williams said while foundation phase pupils would go back across Wales, local authorities and headteachers would be given some flexibility over how the return is organised.
There have been a further 399 cases of coronavirus in Wales, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 194,924. Public Health Wales reported another 45 deaths, taking the total in Wales since the start of the pandemic to 4,912.
The organisation said a total of 523,042 first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine had now been given, an increase of 32,472 from the previous day. It said 1,635 second doses were also given, an increase of 419.
Sharon Peacock, thee director of COG-UK (Covid-19 Genomics Consortium) and a professor of public health and microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said that coronavirus “still has some tricks up its sleeve” in terms of variants. Asked which of the current variants was of most concern, she told BBC Radio 4’s World At One:
If I could have a vaccine against particular variants, I would certainly place the variant first detected in South Africa close to the top of my list.
The vaccine trials in South Africa demonstrate that there’s some reduced efficacy against some vaccines, so that would be close to the top of my list.
The current UK variant that’s circulating at the moment, with the additional mutations as they arise, I think that that’s also really critical.
But again we have to be watchful because this story hasn’t played out yet and the virus I think still has some tricks up its sleeve, in terms of what other mutations may arise and that may impact on our immune response.
Updated
Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said that polling stations will need to maintain the same standards as a “Covid-secure workplace” when local elections will go ahead in England in May. Asked if elections going ahead was safe, she told BBC Radio 4’s World At One:
I think many countries around the world have run elections in jurisdictions during this pandemic.
It’s really important that we continue to be able to look at our democracy and carry through those processes that we’re used to.
What you need to do with elections at the current time is think about much more postal voting.
And then when we’re going into places where people will be voting in person, the proportion that will, you really need to maintain the same kinds of standards we would do for a Covid-secure workplace, a retail outlet, et cetera. It is achievable.
The estimates for R and the growth rate are provided by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) – scientists advising the government.
The growth rate, which estimates how quickly the number of infections is changing day by day, is between minus 5% and minus 2% for the UK as a whole, the Press Association reports.
It means the number of new infections is shrinking by between 2% to 5% every day. Estimates for R and growth rates are shown as a range and the true values are likely to lie within this range, according to the experts.
Sage also said the estimated published on Friday are based on the latest data, available up to 1 February, including hospital admissions and deaths as well as symptomatic testing and prevalence studies.
Updated
The R value is now between 0.7 and 1 across the UK
The reproduction number, or R value, of coronavirus transmission across the UK is between 0.7 and 1, according to the latest government figures. Last week, it was between 0.7 and 1.1, the Press Association reports.
R represents the average number of people each Covid-19 positive person goes on to infect. When the figure is greater than 1, an outbreak can grow exponentially. But, when it is less than 1, it means the epidemic is shrinking.
An R value between 0.7 and 1.0 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 7 and 10 other people.
Wales deputy chief medical officer Dr Chris Jones told the Welsh government briefing that coronavirus transmission rates among young children were low.
He said:
The evidence is still very strong that in the youngest children transmission is low.
They do not get severe forms of the disease and they do not tend to transmit it as much as adults or even older teenagers.
The one determinant that’s been more obvious than any other throughout the pandemic has been the relationship between numbers of cases for pupils in schools and in teachers, and the rates of transmission in the community.
I’m now going to hand over to my colleague Kevin Rawlinson for a while.
Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine likely similarly effective for UK variant as for original Covid-19 virus, research suggests
The Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine could be as effective at fighting the UK variant as it is in fighting the original virus, new research suggests.
PA reports:
Oxford University researchers who developed the vaccine say it has a similar efficacy against the variant first detected in Kent and the South East of the UK, compared to the original strain of Covid-19 that it was tested against.
Andrew Pollard, professor of paediatric infection and immunity, and chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, said: “Data from our trials of the ChAdOx1 vaccine in the United Kingdom indicate that the vaccine not only protects against the original pandemic virus, but also protects against the novel variant, B117, which caused the surge in disease from the end of 2020 across the UK.”
The pre-print from Oxford, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, found that vaccine efficacy against symptomatic positive infection was similar for the new UK variant and the previous strain, at 74.6% and 84% respectively.
Pollard said it was not possible to say whether the efficacy levels were the same or different because of overlapping confidence intervals.
He added: “The important issue is that it’s in a very similar ballpark to the previously reported efficacy and they’re very similar to each other.
“We can’t actually say statistically whether those numbers are actually different. If they were, it’s a relatively small percentage - it’s still in the high 70s or 80s for both.”
Updated
The R number in Wales is currently estimated to be between 0.7 and 0.9. The infection rate is around 127 people per 100,000, against 650 at the peak before Christmas.
More than 523,000 people have had their first dose of the vaccine and the Welsh government said it had vaccinated more people as a percentage of its population than any of the other UK nations.
It remains on course to offer vaccinations to everyone in the first four priority groups by mid-February – and at a press briefing education minister Kirsty Williams said Wales was “on track” to offer first doses of vaccines to all over-50s by May.
The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals that Covid remains rife in the UK.
Around 1 in 65 people in the community in England are estimated to have had the disease in the week ending 30 January, compared with 1 in 70 in Wales, 1 in 65 in Northern Ireland and 1 in 115 in Scotland. The week before the figures were 1 in 55, 1 in 70, 1 in 50 and 1 in 110 respectively.
“The percentage of people testing positive in the East of England appears to have increased in the week ending 30 January 2021. In the same week, the percentage of people testing positive in London, the South East, North West, North East, and the South West have decreased. Rates in all other regions appeared to be level,” they write.
The data suggests lockdown is having an effect, with the percentage of people testing positive for Covid falling in three of the four nations.
But the drop is no where near as dramatic as might be expected from cases reported from pillar 1 and II testing programme – the figures that are shown on the government Covid dashboard each day – or the positivity rate calculated by Public Health England from pillar II (community) tests.
Why there is such a disparity is hard to say. The ONS survey, which looks at samples from randomly selected households is not affected by the changes to testing behaviour that the daily case figures could be influenced by – what’s more it picks up both symptomatic and asymptomatic infections.
However unlike the pillar 1 and II data, these are not necessarily new infections - some might have been caught several days previously, meaning it might take sightly longer for a drop in that positivity rate to show up.
There is also a question about the use of lateral flow tests – it is not yet clear whether the growing use of these tests in the testing programme could be influencing the daily figures in some way.
What is clear is that infection levels remain high, a situation supported by other data including from the Covid Symptom study which looks at cases reported by users through its app. While this study found cases to have fallen by 70% from a peak on 1 January, the team estimate average 1 in 170 people in the UK currently have symptomatic Covid.
What’s more, Covid continues exert a huge pressure on the NHS. While hospital figures are now beginning to show a fall in both admissions and the number of patients in hospital with Covid, there are still more patients receiving hospital care for the disease than was the case at the peak of the first wave.
No current plans to roll out vaccine passports, No 10 says
PA reports:
A No 10 spokesman said: “There are still no current plans to roll out vaccine passports. Going on holiday is currently illegal.
“We have always been clear that we will keep the situation under review. We are not going to speculate on this matter any further.”
As we reported earlier, the Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said on Friday the UK government will work with other countries to “help facilitate” coronavirus immunity passports if they are required by other countries.
Updated
This just in from the FT’s Jim Pickard:
Number 10 spokesman: "There are still no current plans to roll out vaccine passports."
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) February 5, 2021
Cabinet Office claim on jabs for all 50 and over dismissed "in error", Downing Street says
The Cabinet Office was right to say all adults aged 50 and over will have had a coronavirus vaccine by May, Downing Street has now said.
This from PA:
In a chaotic briefing for journalists, a No 10 spokesman initially said that a Cabinet Office press notice - confirming local elections would go ahead on May 6 - had been issued “in error” and had been withdrawn.
However, a few minutes later the spokesman said the notice - which said the vaccination programme planned to have reached all nine priority cohorts by May - was correct.
“We have confirmed today that the elections must go ahead,” the spokesman said. “The Cabinet Office document is correct.”
The government had previously only said its “ambition” was to vaccinate the nine priority cohorts by the spring.
The spokesman said Boris Johnson will set out a “precise timetable” on 15 February.
This from LBC’s Ben Kentish:
Well that was...a journey.
— Ben Kentish (@BenKentish) February 5, 2021
No10 says Cabinet Office’s unwitting announcement that over-50s will be vaccinated by May was “issued in errror” & being withdrawn.
5 mins later they say this is wrong & it isn’t being withdrawn.
2 mins after that they say Cabinet Office was correct.
Updated
Vaccines approved for use in UK are safe, MHRA says, after examining new data
Covid vaccines approved for use in the UK are safe, with the benefits of their use far outweighing any risks, the UK’s medicines regulator has said after examining new data.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has released a document revealing that just three people for every 1,000 vaccinated reported a suspected side effect after receiving either the Pfizer/BioNTech or the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab between 9 December 2020 to 24 January 2021.
“More than 100,000 people [in the UK] have sadly lost their lives from Covid-19,” said Dr June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA. “We know these are very safe and effective vaccines, that will prevent many further deaths and complications from Covid-19.”
In total 22,820 suspected side effects were reported among 6.9m vaccinations given – the majority of which were first doses. Most of these reports involved mild events, such as a sore arm, muscle pain, headache, chills or fever – side effects that are often seen with other vaccines and were short-lived. Adverse reactions, it appeared, were more common among younger individuals – as seen in clinical trials.
The data, which was submitted voluntarily by members of the public and medical professionals through a system known as the ‘Yellow Card scheme’, suggests adverse effects from the jabs are far lower than detected during clinical trials, where more than 10% of those vaccinated reported side effects. The MHRA said that could be because not everyone will report their experiences through the Yellow Card scheme.
“Most of the Yellow Card reports that the expert advisory group have seen have been very similar to those 1 in 10 type of reports which were seen in clinical trials,” said professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, Chair of the Expert Working Group of the Independent Commission on Human Medicines.
The MHRA report on the Yellow Card data – which will in future be published every week – also noted that 107 had been reported to have died shortly after vaccination with the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, and 34 reports for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. For a further two deaths it was unclear which vaccine had been given. However most of these reports related to elderly individuals or those with underlying health conditions.
“Review of individual reports and patterns of reporting does not suggest the vaccine played a role in the death,” the report states.
Updated
Health secretary Matt Hancock has tweeted a little while ago about the news that the UK had ordered 50m doses of the CureVac coronavirus vaccine.
“We are bolstering our defences against the risk of new variants. Delighted to announce partnership with CureVac to develop vaccines against variants. We have ordered 50m doses with onshore UK manufacturing capacit,”he wrote.
Hancock also said on Friday the UK needed to be prepared for “all eventualities”.
He said, according to PA:
The vaccines we are deploying now are safe and effective, with the latest evidence suggesting they provide protection against new strains of Covid-19.
But we must be prepared for all eventualities and bolster onshore UK manufacturing capacity to develop vaccines to combat new variants of the disease, taking advantage of our world-leading genomics expertise.
This will help ensure we can continue to provide everyone with a high level of protection against the virus and save lives.
Downing Street dismisses Cabinet Office claim all over 50s will get jab by May
We reported earlier that the Cabinet Office said all UK adults aged 50 and over should receive a coronavirus vaccine by the start of May.
However, Downing Street dismissed the timetable in the government document – which said the first nine priority groups of people should have been offered a coronavirus vaccine by early May – prompting renewed confusion over the expected date.
Any programme for reopening the economy depends on the speed of what is officially termed phase 1 of the vaccination programme, which takes in the top nine groups by vulnerability to the virus, going as far as all adults aged 50 and above.
No 10 has said only that the target to reach this milestone is “spring”, refusing repeatedly to be more precise.
My colleagues Peter Walker and Heather Stewart report.
Williams also told the Welsh government briefing:
Following productive discussions with our union colleagues and local authority and further education partners, we are introducing a number of additional measures to provide staff with an added level of assurance for their safe return to face-to-face teaching.
This includes the introduction of twice-weekly testing for staff members as well as increased financial support for new face coverings.
We are providing an additional 5 million to support schools, colleges and local authorities to invest further in items they need to keep their premises safe.
Education minister Kirsty Williams told the Welsh government briefing on Friday that children in the foundation stage of their schooling would return to school from February 22.
She said:
We have been clear that our children’s education is a priority throughout this pandemic.
Sadly, we are not yet in a position to be able to see a full return to school for every learner.
However, thanks to people following our national guidance, there is sufficient headroom for us to bring back some of our learners in a phased, flexible and progressive way.
After half term, from 22 February, our foundation phase learners will start to return to school during that week.
Children of critical workers and vulnerable learners, as well as those taking exams or assessments and learners in special schools, will continue to be able to attend as they have done throughout the pandemic.
We have prioritised our youngest learners because of the favourable evidence on transmission in younger children, and also because we know they find it difficult to learn remotely.
Small numbers of vocational learners, including apprentices, will also be able to return to colleges.
Again, this is because of difficulties with remote learning, as they will need to access training or workplace environments in order to undertake their practical qualifications.
Scotland sees largest daily number of vaccinations given since rollout began
As of 8.30am, another 48,165 patients in Scotland had received a first dose of coronavirus vaccine, taking the total to 742,512, Swinney said.
The increase is the largest daily increase since the vaccination programme began.
Scotland has recorded 61 further deaths from coronavirus and 895 positive tests in the past 24 hours, Swinney said.
The number of new cases has fallen from the 1,149 announced on Thursday, although the number of deaths has increased from 53.
It brings the death toll of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days to 6,383.
Swinney said 184,313 people have now tested positive in Scotland, up from 183,418 the previous day.
The daily test positivity rate is 4.9%, the same as yesterday.
There are 1,794 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, down 18 from 1,812 since yesterday, and 123 patients are in intensive care, down four, PA reports.
A total of 99% of older care home residents have received a vaccine, along with 93% of all care home residents.
In the over-80s group, 92% have now received at least one dose.
Over in Scotland, deputy First Minister John Swinney is currently giving the Scottish government’s daily coronavirus update.
“It is abundantly clear that we are making excellent progress on the vaccination programme,” Swinney said, but stressed that weather conditions could disrupt vaccinations “over the next day or so”.
“We’re moving as fast as we possibly can do,” Swinney said. “We hope the weather doesn’t disrupt [the vaccination programme],” he said, adding that the government was making sure that every vaccination site will be a priority for snow clearing efforts on streets.
“I don’t envisage this will have a significant impact on the vaccination programme,” he said.
Swinney said the Scottish government had to take into account the necessity of the rollout of the second doses in about three weeks.
Infections had slowed to around 120 cases per 100,000 people in Scotland, he added.
Updated
London continues to have the highest proportion of people likely to test positive for coronavirus in any region of England, with around one in 50 people in private households estimated to have had Covid-19 between 24 and 30 January, the ONS said.
This is down from an estimated one in 35 for the period from 17 to 23 January.
For eastern England, north-west England and the West Midlands the estimate is one in 55 people.
The other estimates are one in 65 for the East Midlands, one in 80 for south-east England and north-east England, one in 90 for Yorkshire and the Humber, and one in 100 for south-west England.
The UK has agreed a deal with German company CureVac to develop vaccines against new strains of coronavirus, the business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said.
He tweeted:
We’ve entered into a partnership with CureVacRNA to rapidly develop vaccines against new strains.
We must be prepared for all eventualities so we’ve placed an order for 50m doses, if required.
I can also confirm the agreement will allow large-scale manufacturing in the UK.”
1 in 65 people in England had virus in last week of January - ONS
The Office of National Statistics just released its latest estimates on infection rates in the UK.
According to the ONS, one in 65 people in England had Covid-19 in the week up to 30 January - the equivalent of 846,900 people - compared to one in 55 people who had the virus in England in the previous week.
The ONS said: “Our modelling suggests that the percentage of people testing positive in England decreased in the week ending 30 January 2021, but remains high.”
In the last week of January, one in 70 people in Wales were infected, one in 65 in Northern Ireland and one in 115 in Scotland.
We’ve produced our latest estimates for the level of #COVID19 infection rates across the UK https://t.co/lNvKlLn2IO pic.twitter.com/ucCPJxHACe
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) February 5, 2021
The ONS said on Friday the infection rate has decreased in London, the South East, North West, North East, and the South West in the week ending 30 January, but did not decrease in the East of England, Yorkshire and The Humber and the East Midlands, where infections have plateaued.
In the week ending 30 January, the number of cases that are compatible with the new UK variant of the virus decreased in all regions except the East of England, Yorkshire and The Humber and the East Midlands https://t.co/opYVaQt5cT pic.twitter.com/YJcLQWH319
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) February 5, 2021
Updated
More people reported staying at home or only leaving for basic needs during the early-2021 lockdown than during the winter 2020 restrictions, but this is lower than in the spring 2020 lockdown, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.
Compliance with hand washing, face covering and space guidance has remained high through autumn into the new year, with more people reporting they maintain social distancing, the ONS said in a new report titled “Coronavirus and the social impacts on behaviours during different lockdown periods, Great Britain: up to February 2021” released on Friday.
Optimism about when life will return to normal declined during the first months of 2021, and the proportion of people meeting up in a personal place are similar to the spring 2020 lockdown, but meetings in public places are slightly higher since the beginning of the year compared with the spring lockdown.
Social distancing has increased from 76% in September to 90% by the end of January, the report states.
A third of the government’s £1bn rebuilding programme for schools in England could go up in smoke, literally, because of the failure to mandate that sprinklers be added, according to an insurance company.
Yesterday the government named the 50 schools in the first wave of rebuilding - out of the more than 232,000 state schools in England.
Tilden Watson, Zurich UK’s head of education, said:
It is disappointing that sprinklers won’t be mandated in any of these revamped schools.
Based on large fires alone, Zurich estimates that the repair bill for school fires could hit £320m over 10 years – a significant portion of the government’s slated investment. Unless ministers change the law on sprinklers, much of this investment will be wasted on repairing the fire damage that sprinklers could have easily prevented.
It is in the government’s interest to enhance the resilience of the school estate to protect taxpayers’ money. Compulsory sprinklers in all new and rebuilt schools must be central to this.
When vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Wednesday that there were “4000 variants” of Covid-19 across the world, he was confusing mutations with variants.
While the word variant could be applied to any mutant form of the same strain, experts say the term has come to mean something different.
“The vaccine minister is not referring to variants as we have come to know them, rather he is referring to individual mutations,” said Prof Ravi Gupta, professor of Microbiology at the University of Cambridge.
“The number of mutations has little actual relevance as many mutations emerge and disappear continuously. Scientists are using ‘variants’ to describe viruses with mutations that are transmitting in the general population – there aren’t 4,000 of those.”
My colleague Nicola Davis, the Guardian’s science correspondent, has written a handy explainer on coronavirus variants.
Union leaders in Wales have called for teachers to be prioritised for Covid vaccines when children begin to return to classrooms after half-term.
The Welsh government is expected to announce later on Friday that children in the foundation phase – those up to the age of seven – can return to school in person from 22 February.
But unions have said the Labour-led government has not given details of how teachers and other staff will be kept safe and are ramping up calls for ministers to add them to the vaccine priority list.
Dilwyn Roberts-Young, the general secretary of the Welsh teaching union UCAC, said:
If Welsh government announces a return to classrooms for foundation phase children after half-term, there are a number of mitigations that our members will want to see in place, for example, local flexibility to stagger the return.
We’ll also need clear guidelines about social distancing, the use of face coverings, sufficient ventilation, and which staff are exempt from return and can continue to work from home.
Above all, school staff need to hear that they figure in the government’s priority list for vaccination, particularly those in the foundation phase where it is almost impossible to ensure social distancing.
Full story here:
Psychologists are reporting a rise in “pandemic burnout” in the UK as many people find the current phase of lockdowns harder, with an increasing number feeling worn out and unable to cope.
They warn that many are finding the latest lockdown more difficult due to a realisation that coronavirus will be around longer than expected, dashed hopes about an easing of restrictions, and a period of sustained stress similar to overwork, which has prompted symptoms such as fatigue.
Data also indicates people are finding it harder to stay positive, with 60% saying they are finding it harder to stay positive each day compared with before the pandemic – an eight-point increase from November, an Ipsos Mori survey found.
My colleague Sarah Marsh has more.
Updated
At least 235 frontline health and care workers have been identified after dying from coronavirus.
Through tributes from loved ones and confirmation through sources such as local NHS trusts and other authorities, PA Media has confirmed the names of health and social care workers who have died after contracting Covid-19 since 11 March 2020.
Among them are Chris Buckingham, who was a nurse at North Cumbria clinical commissioning group (CCG), joining the team in March 2020; Linda Parkinson, a healthcare assistant and mother of three who worked on a ward for elderly patients at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary; and Andrew Woolhouse, 55, who was a porter at University Hospital Llandough (UHL) in south Wales and was described as “devoted” to his wife Marianne and daughters.
Updated
Extra trial data shows Oxford/AstraZeneca jab effective in elderly, MHRA says
British regulators have received extra trial data from AstraZeneca that supports their view that the Covid-19 vaccine developed with Oxford University is effective in elderly people, a vaccines official said on Friday.
Reuters reports:
Britain has been rolling out the shot among all age groups after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was the first regulator to approve it in December, but some other European countries have said more data is needed before it is given to those over 65.
“Since [initial approval] we’ve seen more data coming through from AstraZeneca as more people are completing the trial, which highlights again that efficacy in the elderly is seen, and there’s no evidence of lack of efficacy,” Munir Pirmohamed, chair of the Commission on Human Medicines Covid-19 Vaccines Benefit Risk Expert Working Group, said at a MHRA news briefing.
Updated
The UK’s medicine regulator has said the “vast majority” of reported side-effects from the Covid-19 vaccines are mild and all are in line with most types of vaccine including the seasonal flu vaccine.
Sky News reports:
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said data shows that the safety of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccines remains as high as expected from the clinical trial data that supported the approvals.
“The safety profile of the vaccines remains positive and the benefits continue to far outweigh any known side-effects,” it said in a statement.
Over 10m doses of the vaccines have been given across the UK and the MHRA has gathered a large amount of safety data.
The MHRA said data published today shows 22,820 reports of suspected side-effects, or an overall reporting rate of three in 1,000 doses of vaccine administered from 9 December to 24 January 2021.
“This reassuring data has shown that the vast majority of reported side effects are mild and all are in line with most types of vaccine, including the seasonal flu vaccine,” it adds.
Updated
Pubs have been forced to throw away up to 87m pints of beer in the UK since the start of the pandemic, an industry body has claimed.
PA Media reports:
The British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) said the waste was the equivalent of £331m in sales, based on the average cost of a pint at £3.81.
Emma McClarkin, the association’s chief executive, warned there would be a “wave of closures” and job losses in the sector unless the government provides further financial support.
She has called for an extension to the VAT cut for the hospitality sector and a reduction to the UK’s “excessive” beer duty – the tax on selling and producing beer.
McClarkin said: “Our sector is in limbo. And at several points in the last 12 months, pubs and breweries have effectively had to pour their revenues down the drain.
“We have no idea or clarity from government on when we can reopen again.”
If pubs are told to stay closed beyond March, McClarkin said further government grants would be needed to support them.
“Without this, neither pubs or brewers will be around to brew and serve beer when we can reopen”, she said.
It comes as researchers suggested in January that bars and restaurants should stay shut until May, warning that reopening society too quickly could have a “disastrous” effect.
Dr Marc Baguelin, from Imperial College London, who sits on the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), which advises the government, said the opening of the hospitality sector before May would lead to another “bump” in transmission.
The BBPA said it carried out a survey of its members – which brew 90% of UK beer – to estimate how much had been wasted since the start of the pandemic.
Updated
Large numbers of contact tracers have been fired without warning by Test and Trace, after a manager claimed they were told to “reduce the number of staff as the number of cases reduces”.
Sky News reports:
The contact tracers were dismissed on Wednesday with one week’s notice by Sitel, the Dutch outsourcing giant which runs a large part of Test and Trace’s call centre operation.
It is not known how many contact tracers were dismissed, but staff working for Sitel reported that whole teams of around 20 have been dismissed, while other teams have been cut in half.
There has been no official announcement of cuts at Test and Trace, which is still regarded as one of England’s key defences against the virus, despite heavy criticism of its performance.
Internal messages from one manager, seen by Sky News, said that “the client” – that is, Test and Trace – had instructed Sitel to “reduce the number of staff as the number of cases reduces”.
The message added: “At this point in time as a business we need to reduce the number of agents because we have done our jobs.”
A government website shows the Department for Health and Social Care is still recruiting for various managerial positions for Test and Trace, including for a chief of staff at the National Covid Response Centre, a deputy chief of staff, a head of operations at Covid-19 regional and local test sites, an integration manager, a business analyst, a head of data engineering, an enterprise architect and a head of Enterprise architecture, among others.
Updated
The Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said on Friday the UK government will work with other countries to “help facilitate” coronavirus immunity passports if they are required by destinations abroad.
Cleverly said it would be up to the individual countries where holidaymakers are arriving to decide on their own border arrangements.
But he said it was “not an uncommon practice” for countries to require documents on inoculations and that the government would work with international partners on this.
Cleverly told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday:
The decisions that individual countries make about their own incoming arrangements is obviously up to them.
We are incredibly proud of the speed and the breadth of our vaccination rollout and of course, I think the whole world hopes, that the vaccination programme will be a way of getting back to normality.
Asked if the UK would help in providing certificates, he said:
It is often the case that the entry requirements for countries are for vaccines or inoculations, and that is not an uncommon practice.
We will work with international partners to help facilitate their border arrangements and their immigration arrangements.
Cleverly told Sky News that at present most countries, including the UK, require a negative test result on arrival.
He said:
And we’ll have to see what countries, what the international community, put in place once vaccines around the world are as effectively distributed, as they are here in the UK.
Updated
All adults aged 50 and over to get vaccine by May, government says
All adults aged 50 and over will have had a coronavirus vaccine by May, the Cabinet Office said.
PA Media reports:
The Cabinet Office said the UK’s vaccination programme planned to have reached all nine priority cohorts by May - which it said gave the government confidence to commit to holding local elections that month.
Previously the government has declined to give a firm date, saying only that all over-50s would likely receive their first dose of a vaccine by the spring.
The government’s vaccines delivery plan states: “The government’s top priority is to ensure that everyone in cohorts 1-4 is offered the opportunity to receive their first dose of vaccination against Covid-19 by February 15.
“It will likely take until spring to offer the first dose of vaccination to the JCVI priority groups 1-9, with estimated cover of around 27 million people in England and 32 million people across the UK.”
Door-to-door coronavirus testing in the Maidstone area of Kent was completed on Thursday night, PA Media reports.
One case of the South African variant had been identified in the local population before door-to-door testing of about 10,000 people began on Tuesday.
Updated
The Department for Education (DfE) was “surprisingly unconcerned” with suspected large profits made by a private contractor at the centre of a free school meals fiasco and failed to reduce the costs, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.
A report by a cross-party committee found that Gavin Williamson’s department failed to renegotiate the terms of a contract with Edenred to run the national voucher scheme, despite a fivefold increase in public spending from £78m to £425m.
When asked by the public accounts committee to disclose the profits made by Edenred, the DfE declined to do so on the grounds of “commercial confidentiality”.
My colleague Rajeev Syal reports.
Updated
The Cabinet Office has confirmed that local elections will go ahead in England on 6 May.
The minister for the constitution and devolution, Chloe Smith, told PA:
We are publishing a detailed plan to deliver May’s elections in a safe and secure way.
This is backed up by additional funding for councils, and practical changes to electoral laws to help both voters and candidates.
Democracy should not be cancelled because of Covid. More than ever, local people need their say as we build back better, on issues ranging from local roads, to safer streets, to the level of council tax.
As the government rolls out the vaccine to the most vulnerable, we will be able to leave lockdown and open our country up safely again. We will work with political parties to ensure that these important elections are free and fair.
Updated
In another worrying development, up to 100 children a week are being hospitalised with a rare disease that can emerge weeks after Covid-19, leaving them in intensive care, doctors have said.
In a phenomenon that is worrying paediatricians, 75% of the children worst affected by paediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome (PIMS) were black, Asian or ethnic minority (BAME). Almost four out of five children were previously healthy, according to an unpublished snapshot of cases.
When PIMS emerged in the first wave of the pandemic, it caused confusion among doctors, concern among NHS bosses and alarm among parents.
It was initially thought to be Kawasaki disease, a rare condition that mainly affects babies and infants. But PIMS has been recognised as a separate, novel post-viral syndrome that one in 5,000 children get about a month after having Covid, regardless of whether they had symptoms.
My colleagues Denis Campbell and Caroline Bannock report.
British officials have started working on a “vaccine passport”, the Times reports (paywalled), as Greece prepares to waive quarantine rules for tourists who can prove that they have been inoculated against coronavirus.
The Foreign Office, Department for Transport and Department of Health and Social Care are working on certificates that would allow travellers to enter countries that may demand it as a condition of entry.
British tourists could be able to visit Greece from May provided they have a vaccination certificate, tourism officials said.
Updated
Prof Graham Medley from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and chairman of the Sage modelling subgroup Spi-M, said the government should “make decisions dependent on the circumstances, rather than being driven by a calendar of wanting to do things”.
Asked why case numbers were important if the older population and the vulnerable were protected by vaccines, he told the Today programme:
Vaccination offers a way out and it does reduce the impact of infection, but it doesn’t remove it completely.
And so case numbers are still important because they represent the risk of having to go back into some kind of national measures.
Asked whether case numbers needed to be as low as 1,000 a day, he said:
Clearly the lower the numbers of cases are, the more time you have to react if things start to go badly wrong.
If the case numbers are very high, if they’re as high as they are at the moment, for example, then you will have very little time in which to react to avoid the kind of national lockdown that we’re in at the moment, which nobody wants.
In an interview with the Guardian, the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said ministers should take a cautious approach to lifting lockdown in England so that new coronavirus cases can be driven down to a manageable level of 1,000 a day.
Updated
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Cleverly said he was not able to give a timetable of restrictions easing, but said plans will take into consideration “the needs of the economy, people’s mental health, the education of our children”.
He said:
The decisions will be based on the assessment of what is safe, as well as effective.
I can’t give you absolute guarantees of exactly when restrictions will be eased, in which order, in which sectors, I’m just not able to do that.
But those decisions will be guided by the science. They will take into consideration the needs of the economy, people’s mental health, the education of our children, all these things are incredibly important.
And I totally get the frustration that we all feel with these restrictions, but they are there for a reason.
Updated
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said it was “unsurprising” that no hotels had formally signed up to the quarantine plan, as the announcement came late last night.
When asked how many hotels had signed up, he told interviewer Charlie Stayt:
I don’t have that detail at my fingertips.
But what we have done is we have made sure that we are planning for capacity greater than the expected numbers of people arriving from those countries.
The number of hotels will be based on the upper estimate of the number of people who might be arriving.
When asked if it was fair to say that no hotels had signed up, Cleverly said:
The announcement only came out at one minute past midnight this morning, so it’s unsurprising that no one has formally signed up to this.
But the whole point of this is that we give the hotels notice, because they will need to change the way they operate.
Updated
Dr Mike Tildesley, an associate professor in infectious disease modelling at the School of Life Sciences and Mathematics Institute at the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (SPI-M), the modelling subgroup of Sage, said hotel quarantine policies should come in immediately when there was a need.
He told Times Radio:
As with any control policy, as soon as you realise you might need to do this you need to introduce it immediately, which is why any delay, as we saw perhaps with the South African variant and delays to bans there, leads to the possibility of the virus getting in and circulating more widely.
It’s important that we do isolate people coming in to reduce the risk of variants coming from other countries, but also we are getting homegrown new variants here and that’s not going to help that.
Updated
Meher Nawab, the chief executive of London Hotel Group, said it would take time and “due diligence” to prepare hotels to receive quarantining travellers.
He told BBC Breakfast:
In our set procedures, which the virologists have set, we’re not allowed to let the customers leave the room, they are completely self-isolating in the room, they are provided three meals a day.
There is a lot of training to go into this, a lot of health protocols as well, and actually the insurance has to be approved.
If you want to do something properly, and the amount of due diligence and protocol that has to go into place, it takes a long time.
Nawab said the 10 days given by the government before the scheme kicks in on 15 February was not enough time to suitably prepare facilities.
To set all the processes up you need virologists to come and visit the property, you need to set up hygiene protocols, that can’t all be done overnight.
The ventilation system has to be looked at very closely. I’m not sure what [the government] has set out can be done in this time.
There has been no open dialogue between the hospitality sector and the government.
Updated
The Telegraph reported that sources have confirmed the government will pay an estimated £55m bill for the quarantine rooms upfront, then attempt to recoup the cost from arrivals.
Paul Charles, a travel consultant who runs the Quash Quarantine campaign, said quarantining travellers in hotels was a “blunt tool” and not the “panacea for stopping Covid entering the UK”.
He told the Today programme:
Governments use these blunt tools and put these measures in place relatively quickly, although this has been very slow, but they have a habit of leaving them in place longer than is necessary.
It would be much better for the anticipated [fifty] five million pound upfront cost to be spent on investing in testing at arrivals and departures at Britain’s airports. That would have more impact.
Updated
|The shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said the government was again doing “too little, too late”.
He said:
It is beyond comprehension that these measures won’t even start until February 15.
We are in a race against time to protect our borders against new Covid strains.
Yet hotel quarantine will come into force more than 50 days after the South African strain was discovered.
Even when these measures eventually begin, they will not go anywhere near far enough to be effective in preventing further variants.
Adrian Ellis, the chair of the Manchester Hospitality Association and general manager of the city’s Lowry hotel, said the opportunity to open up for guests for quarantine purposes would be “welcomed” by some owners, but that details about plans were still scarce.
“We don’t know which hotels are assigned and we don’t know how the rules will work,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Updated
Government defends delay of hotel quarantine scheme
Good morning.
On Thursday evening the government announced it would implement mandatory hotel quarantine for arrivals in the UK from high-risk countries, but not until 15 February.
The Foreign Office minister, James Cleverly, has defended the government’s delay in introducing the scheme, as ministers were reportedly racing to reserve thousands of hotel rooms near airports in time.
Cleverly told Sky News on Friday: “We’ve been working with international partners who put a similar package in place – New Zealand, Australia, for example – to see how that works. It’s very easy for you to say, oh, all you have to do is … but hindsight is a wonderful thing.”
Yesterday, a hotel boss lamented a lack of communication from the government with the hotel industry.
Ministers expect almost 1,500 UK residents a day to return from 33 “red list” countries, which includes most of South America, southern Africa, UAE and Portugal, where new variants of coronavirus are circulating. These arrivals will have to quarantine at their own cost in government-approved hotel quarantine facilities for 10 days.
Non-UK travellers from these areas are barred from entry to the UK, meaning the quarantine plan will apply only to UK passport holders.
Officials were booking rooms in hotels around key airports such as Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, according to BBC News. Reports claimed up to 28,000 hotel rooms were being sought for the plan.
I’m Jedidajah Otte and will be taking you through today’s developments in all things pandemic in the UK for the next few hours. Do feel free to get in touch with comments, tips and updates, you can reach me on Twitter @JedySays or via email.
Updated
