Early evening summary
- The UK has recorded its deadliest day from coronavirus so far, with 1,610 deaths recorded on the government’s dashboard.
- There could be a phased reopening of schools in England based on regional infection rates after a lifting of the national lockdown, MPs have been told.
- Scotland’s lockdown will continue until “at least the middle of February”, Nicola Sturgeon has told the Scottish parliament, with no definite date for a full return to schools and nurseries.
- About one in eight people in the community in England would have been expected to test positive for coronavirus antibodies in December, data suggests, revealing the majority of the population are still at risk from Covid-19.
- Matt Hancock has become the latest senior politician to self-isolate after contact with someone who has contracted coronavirus, with the UK health secretary saying he had been “pinged” by the NHS app.
- Ministers are set to halt plans for daily coronavirus tests in England’s secondary schools after teachers expressed alarm that the flagship policy had not been approved by regulators.
- Nearly three-quarters of the pubs promised a £1,000 grant by the prime minister to help them survive the loss of Christmas sales in England are still waiting for the money, the industry trade body has warned.
- Britain’s most senior police chief has said she is “baffled” by the government’s decision not to prioritise frontline police officers for Covid vaccines despite her repeated requests to ministers.
- MPs have just started voting on a series of amendments to the trade bill, with Boris Johnson facing a revolt by some Conservative MPs who are backing a proposal intended to give the high court the power to block a trade deal with a country if that country is responsible for genocide. We will be covering the outcome here.
That’s all from me for today. But our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog. It’s here.
Updated
'Decisions have consequences', says EU ambassador in comment on fishing industry's export difficulties
The EU’s ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida, has described the problems being faced by British seafood producers exporting to the EU as evidence that “decisions have consequences”.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Bright Blue thinktank, De Almeida said that he hoped exporters would adapt to the new arrangements, but that extra checks were inevitable now that the UK was out of the single market and the customs union. He said:
I like to say that decisions have consequences in the sense that the choice made by the United Kingdom - to leave the European Union first and then to leave the single market and the customs union, the sort of Brexit that you voted for - has consequences.
One of them is that there has to be checks and controls at our borders, there is no way out of that.
Updated
Opposition parties have continued to pile pressure on the Welsh first minister over his assertion that Wales is staggering the distribution of the vaccine.
Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru leader, said his father, a former miner in his 80s, had not received notification of when he would get a jab.
Paul Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, said people in their 90s in his south-west Wales constituency had not heard when they would be vaccinated. “People across Wales are being held prisoner to this virus,” he said.
Davies said the government’s approach was “bewildering” and expressed concern that the vaccination programme was not mentioned in the record of cabinet discussions in November. He added:
Clearly, we in Wales now are paying the price for the Welsh government’s inertia, dithering, and delay. Lives, and livelihoods, are at stake now as much as ever, and the first minister must ensure that the vaccination programme makes up for lost time.
Updated
In a written ministerial statement Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, has announced that the government is going to provide time-limited indemnity against clinical negligence for community pharmacies involved in the Covid vaccine programme and for care homes that receive Covid patients discharged from hospital.
Referring to the care home aspect of this, he said:
The government is committed to ensuring the best care possible for people with Covid-19. For people admitted to hospital who need social care support, we have worked closely with local authorities and the Care Quality Commission to register certain adult social care homes as designated settings. I welcome the response of the care sector to the demand for such care. It is our priority to ensure that people are discharged safely from hospital to the most appropriate setting, and that they receive the care and support they need.
I acknowledge the role of the insurance industry in continuing to provide cover, where possible, for this activity. However, we know that obtaining sufficient insurance to accept Covid-positive patients and sign up to become a designated setting has been a barrier for some care home providers wishing to join the scheme. The designated setting scheme is for people who are medically fit for discharge from hospital (ie, they do not require to be in an acute NHS bed) but whose ongoing care & support needs are such that they require full-time residential or nursing care.
Updated
This is from Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director at Public Health England, commenting on the latest Covid death figures.
Each death is a tragedy and the number of Covid-19 related deaths within 28 days of a positive test will continue for some time throughout this second wave.
Whilst there are some early signs that show our sacrifices are working, we must continue to strictly abide by the measures in place.
By reducing our contacts and staying at home we will see a fall in the number of infections over time.
The UK government’s coronavirus dashboard has now been updated. The key figure - the total for recorded deaths - was published earlier (see 4.26pm), but here are some of the other details.
- There have been four days in a row in January when more than 1,000 people died each day within 28 days of a coronavirus tests. The headline death is for deaths recorded on a particular day, but the dashboard also lists death figures by date of death (although these figures get updated over time, because sometimes deaths do not get recorded until a while after they have happened). On this measure, there was only one day in the first wave when more than 1,000 deaths occurred on a particular day within 28 days of a positive test (8 April, when 1,073 deaths occurred). But the dashboard now shows more than 1,000 deaths occurring each day on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week. More recent days may also hit the 1,000 figure when the statistics get updated.
- The number of deaths in the last seven days is up 20% on the previous week.
-
Hospital admissions in the UK seem to be starting to fall. There were 3,634 on Friday last week, the last day for which a UK figure is available, down from a peak of 4,550 on Tuesday last week.
Updated
UK records 1,610 further Covid deaths - new daily high
The UK has recorded 1,610 further coronavirus deaths. This is the largest daily figure for Covid deaths (defined as deaths within 28 days of testing positive) recorded so far on a single day.
The previous biggest high came on Wednesday last week, when 1,564 deaths were recorded.
The dashboard has not been updated yet, but Public Health England has tweeted the figures. There have also been 33,355 further cases (showing numbers continue to fall) and 4,266,577 people have now had the first dose of a vaccine.
Due to technical difficulties, today's update to the #COVID19 Dashboard is delayed. An update is expected by 16:30 GMT.
— Public Health England (@PHE_uk) January 19, 2021
There have been 33,355 new cases and 1,610 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.
A total of 4,266,577 people have now received the 1st dose of a vaccine. pic.twitter.com/k0Y6f4cezR
Here are the latest coronavirus figures from Northern Ireland. There have been 713 further cases and 24 further deaths.
The number of new cases is well down on the total for last Tuesday (1,205), but today’s deaths total is marginally higher than last Tuesday’s (22).
The Department of Health #COVID19 dashboard has been updated.
— Department of Health (@healthdpt) January 19, 2021
713 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. Sadly, a further 24 deaths have been reported (7 outside the 24 hour period).https://t.co/YN16dmGzhv pic.twitter.com/uKw2RYU7NB
As this chart from the dashboard shows, new cases in Northern Ireland are now falling sharply.
But deaths are rising week on week.
From Robin Swann, Northern Ireland’s health minister
Welcome news that we have received a further delivery of #Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine this morning.
— Robin Swann MLA : #StopCovidNI (@RobinSwannMoH) January 19, 2021
We now have the supply to complete all our over 80's & when that group is finished, there will be enough to start into the over 75 programme.
GPs already placing orders. 💉😷
The Welsh first minister has insisted his government is not rationing the distribution of Covid vaccines following outrage at his earlier suggestion that the rollout of tens of thousands of doses was being staggered.
Mark Drakeford was forced to repeatedly deny today that his government was operating what opposition politicians have claimed is a “go slow” rollout.
Drakeford promised seven out of 10 care home residents and people aged over 80 would have received their first doses by the end of the week and said Wales remained on course to meet its target of vaccinating all members of the top four priority groups by mid-February.
Speaking in the Welsh parliament, he said:
The very top priority for this government is to vaccinate as many people in Wales as quickly and safely as possible.
We’ve had 25,000 doses of the Oxford vaccine available to us over each of the last two weeks.
We expect to have 80,000 doses available to us this week, and we will use all of them, and we will use every drop of the Pfizer vaccine as well before the next delivery of that vaccine arrives here in Wales.
Wales continues to face criticism for lagging behind England and Northern Ireland in the pace of its vaccination programme but Drakeford said: “The race we are in is the race with the virus, between infection and injection, not a race with other countries.”
However, Drakeford warned that there was a “fragility” in the supply chain for both the Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines. He flagged up production issues at a Pfizer plant in Belgium and the loss of a batch of 26,000 Oxford doses earmarked for Wales that did not arrive this week because of a problem with the batch.
Drakeford said: “The problems that have been reported with the vaccine supply are a warning to us that the supply chain does have fragilities in it.” He said the “rate-limiting” factor in vaccination in Wales was the rate of supply of the vaccine.
Updated
In the Commons earlier Caroline Dinenage, a culture minister, said the government had rejected the EU’s plan for post-Brexit visa-free travel for musicians because it would have breached the government’s red lines on migration.
Responding to an urgent question, she said that what was proposed by the EU was not consistent with the government’s desire to get a trade deal that ended free movement. She told MPs:
The EU did not offer a deal that would have worked for musicians. It’s quite simple, the EU in fact made a very broad offer which would not have been compatible with the government’s manifesto commitment to take back control of our borders.
Dinenage said a 90-day visa-free travel period for musicians was not offered by the EU. When Labour’s Ben Bradshaw said that the draft treaty published by the EU in March last year seemed to show that that was what was on offer, she replied:
Well I’d have to correct [Bradshaw] because the document doesn’t say 90-days visa-free touring by UK musicians, it is a lot more opaque than that, which is why couldn’t simply sign up to that because it would not have delivered what we needed for our musicians and just flew in the face of what the British public voted for in the case of controlling our borders.
She also confirmed that British musicians and artists touring in the EU would have to check local immigration rules to ensure they complied.
The SNP MP Pete Wishart, who tabled the urgent question, said that he knew from his days as a musician with Runrig, that touring in Europe “means everything to our artists and musicians”. He said they were now “mere collateral in this government’s obsession in ending freedom of movement”.
Updated
A temporary mortuary is being set up in Hampshire to provide extra capacity following an increase in deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic. As PA Media reports, the new facility is being set up in Winklebury, Basingstoke, and will become operational on Thursday to support the four major NHS hospital mortuaries across the county.
This is from the Daily Echo’s Maria Zaccaro.
County leaders said the step is "necessary". #LDReporterhttps://t.co/cgqiu69nON
— Maria G Zaccaro (@MariaG_Zaccaro) January 19, 2021
John Coughlan, chief executive of Hampshire county council, said:
While our hospitals and funeral sector are currently coping, we are regrettably seeing significant pressures within the system.
We have therefore decided that it is prudent now to open the temporary mortuary to ensure that we are able to carefully manage and respond to any increase in demand for additional capacity.
Scottish Covid hospital numbers edge closer to 2,000 - as new cases at lowest level for 2021
Here are the latest coronavirus figures for Scotland.
- There are 1,989 coronavirus patients in hospital - 30 more than yesterday, and a new all-time high.
- There have been 1,165 new cases, and 11.1% of tests were positive. That is the lowest daily total for new cases this year, and the lowest daily total since Monday 28 December (967).
- There have been 71 further deaths.
- 284,582 people have now received their first dose of the vaccine.
Updated
21% of primary school pupils in England in school last week, latest figures show
More than a fifth of primary school pupils in England were on-site last week during the latest lockdown, new government data (pdf) shows.
As PA Media reports, figures from the Department for Education show 21% of primary school pupils were on-site last week, while 5% of secondary school students were in class.
Overall, 14% of state school pupils were in class on 13 January, which is higher than when schools were partially closed between March and May last year.
Attendance is higher than during the first lockdown where on-site attendance was approximately 4% in primary schools and 1% in secondary schools, PA Media reports.
Anas Sarwar and Monica Lennon will face off to become the leader of Scottish Labour. As PA Media reports, the pair were both able to gain at least the required four nominations each from MSPs or Labour’s sole Scottish MP before nominations closed at noon. The party’s ruling body has set out a condensed timetable which will result in a new leader being appointed to succeed Richard Leonard by the end of next month, more than eight weeks before the Holyrood elections.
Updated
Updated
Nicola Sturgeon also insisted that the reason why Scotland’s vaccine figures were overall lower than England’s is because her government made a deliberate decision to focus first on elderly care home residents. She told the Scottish parliament:
Vaccinating in care homes - for obvious reasons - is more time-consuming and labour intensive than doing so in the community, and this is why overall figures are at this stage lower than in England, where more over-80s generally but a lower proportion of care home residents have so far received the vaccine.
However, doctors’ leaders have continued to raise serious concerns about patchy roll-out, with patients getting anxious and practices frustrated at lack of supply and bureaucracy involved for those who have volunteered to help administer the vaccine.
Ruth Davidson, the Conservative leader in the Scottish parliament, did not get a clear answer when she asked Sturgeon why Scotland had been allocated 700,000 doses and yet 400,000 doses appeared to be awaiting distribution to the frontline.
Sturgeon insisted that the pace of progress in the over-80s group was now picking up, and the target that everyone else in JCVI groups 1 & 2 – all care home residents and over-80s – to have been offered the first dose would be met by the start of February.
She said that by the middle of February she expected to have completed first doses for all over-70s, and for all those who are clinically extremely vulnerable, and that first doses for over-65s would be completed by the start of March, with first doses to everyone on the JCVI priority list by early May. She went on:
That means that in around three months’ time, around 3 million people in total will have received at least the first dose of the vaccine - this is, of course, the majority of the adult population and includes everyone over the age of 50, and many younger people with an underlying health condition.
Updated
Scotland's lockdown to continue until at least middle of February, says Sturgeon
Scotland’s lockdown will continue until “at least the middle of February”, Nicola Sturgeon has told the Scottish parliament, with no definite date for a full return to schools and nurseries.
Acknowledging how “difficult, distressing and damaging” the ongoing disruption to early years care and schooling has been, Sturgeon said that her cabinet’s “reluctant judgment” was that community transmission of the virus was too high, and likely to remain so for the next period, to allow a safe return to school on at the start of February.
Except for vulnerable and key worker children, school and nursery premises will remain closed until mid-February at the earliest.
Sturgeon said that there was some evidence that restrictions – including the strict stay-at-home requirement – were beginning to have an impact, even against the faster-spreading variant, but that these trends needed to continue before any relaxation of lockdown could be considered.
Updated
Vaccinated people mistakenly believe they are “good to go” and socialise with other people despite a continuing threat of the coronavirus, Prof David Halpern, the head of the government’s behavioural unit, said today. My colleague Rajeev Syal has the story.
NHS England has recorded 842 further hospital coronavirus deaths. The details are here.
That is the highest daily total since Thursday last week, when 884 Covid hospital deaths were recorded. But it is the third highest total recorded in this phase of the pandemic. The only other day with a higher total was Wednesday last week, when there were 1,012 hospital deaths.
Although Boris Johnson’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, denied a report in today’s Times saying the PM likes having an afternoon nap (see 1.52pm), Johnson did used to have a snooze in the afternoon when he was London mayor. At least, he did according to Tom Bower, who published a broadly sympathetic biography of Johnson last year (and whose wife, Veronica Wadley, was an adviser to Johnson when he was London mayor). Describing Johnson’s usual routine as mayor, Bower says he got up at 5.30am and usually left home at 7.30am to speak at a breakfast meeting. Bower goes on:
Guarded by Ann Sindall, his loyal PA imported from the Spectator, he usually took a 30-minute nap in the afternoon. Sindall particularly enjoyed repelling visiting Tories, a tribe she hated. ‘Fuck off, he’s got no time for you,’ she snapped.
PM tells cabinet he wants UK to be 'pragmatic and problem-solving partner on world stage'
The Downing Street lobby briefing is over. Here are the main points.
- Downing Street would not back the suggestion from Dr Jenny Harries that school reopening in England might come in phases. (See 12.18pm.) Asked if Boris Johnson agreed, the PM’s spokesman said that Johnson stressed yesterday that his priority was to get schools open as soon as possible. But whether or not that was possible after the February half-term would depend on a number of factors, the spokesman said. But the spokesman did accept that Johnson has said that, once lockdown is lifted, he would like England to return to a tiering system. A tiering system would mean restrictions varying on a regional basis although, under the three-tier system that was in place before Christmas, all schools in England were then expected to be open.
- Johnson told cabinet this morning that he wanted Britain to be “a pragmatic and problem-solving partner on the world stage”. The spokesman said that today’s cabinet was mostly taken up with a discussion of coronavirus and Cop26. But the Cop26 briefing was part of a discussion about “how the UK can exercise international leadership in the year ahead”, the spokesman said. He went on:
The prime minister concluded cabinet explaining by that taking a lead on crucial areas such as health, prosperity, climate and nature, we can showcase what global Britain looks like: a strong steward of the international system and a pragmatic and problem-solving partner on the world stage.
- The spokesman refused to say whether Johnson was sad that President Trump was leaving the White House, or whether he was glad Joe Biden won the presidential election, as Mark Sedwill has claimed. (See 10.55am.) Asked if Johnson wished Trump well, or if he thought Trump was a good president, the spokesman just said Johnson would always have a positive relationship with the US president and that he looked forward to working with Biden.
- The spokesman was unable to provide an explanation as to why some regions are lagging behind others in the delivery of coronavirus vaccines.
- The spokesman rejected the suggestion from George Osborne that some ministers should get priority for the vaccine. (See 11.50am.) The spokesman said:
The prime minister and the rest of the cabinet will take the vaccine when it’s their turn to do so based on the priority lists that have been published.
- The spokesman said there was a “good case” for people with public-facing roles to get prioritised in the second phase of the vaccine roll-out, but he said it would be for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to decide. He was responding to a question about whether the PM agreed with Dame Cressida Dick about it being “baffling” that police officers have not been prioritised. (See 11.28am.)
- The prime minister’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, said it was “untrue” to claim that Johnson sometimes has a nap for half an hour or so during the day. Matt Chorley in the Times (paywall) wrote:
Aides say that Mr Johnson understands the restorative power of 40 winks. “It would not be entirely uncommon in the diary for him to shut the door and have a kip for half an hour or so — a power executive business nap to get him ready for the rest of the day,” said one Downing Street insider who knows the prime minister well.
Asked about the story, Stratton said: “The prime minister does not have a nap. Those reports are untrue.” But when asked if they were completely untrue, she just said they were untrue.
Updated
More than 200,000 laptops and tablets have been delivered or dispatched by the government to help with remote learning since the start of this term, PA Media reports.
New figures from the Department for Education (DfE) suggest that 239,103 devices have been sent to councils, academy trusts, schools and colleges across England since 4 January, when the latest lockdown was announced.
A total of 801,524 laptops and tablets have been delivered or dispatched to support pupils to access remote education since the start of the scheme.
Updated
Covid-related deaths in care homes in England jump by 46%
Deaths in care homes in England have hit the highest level since mid-May, according to the latest official figures, which revealed a 46% jump in coronavirus-related deaths in the last week as the more transmissible variant of Covid-19 breaches care homes defences, my colleagues Robert Booth and Niamh McIntyre report.
Updated
Wales records lowest number of deaths and new cases for more than a month
Public Health Wales has recorded 1,106 further coronavirus cases and eight further deaths.
This is the lowest daily total for the number of new cases since Wednesday 16 December - more than a month ago - when 530 cases were reported.
And it is the lowest daily total for recorded deaths since Monday 7 December, when there were two.
The rapid COVID-19 surveillance dashboard has been updated
— Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) January 19, 2021
💻 https://t.co/zpWRYSUbfh
📱 https://t.co/HSclxpZjBh
Read our daily statement here: https://t.co/u6SKHz0zsG pic.twitter.com/ExlLy1uqEk
Updated
Alok Sharma, president of the UN Cop26 climate crisis summit taking place in Glasgow in November, has said that a Biden presidency will be “good news” for the climate. Giving evidence to the Commons business committee, Sharma said:
A Biden presidency is good news in terms of tackling climate change. I very much welcome the commitments the president-elect has already made in terms of rejoining the Paris agreement and putting the US on the path to net zero by 2050.
I’m very positive about the commitments made during the presidential election and we are looking forward to working closely with the new administration.
Updated
The government has hired a PR firm to boost vaccine take-up among minority groups amid concerns that Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and eastern European people are less likely to accept the jab, Arj Singh reports at HuffPost. There is growing concern about so-called “vaccine hesitancy” amongst BAME communities, with a recently published Sage paper (pdf) reporting that 72% of Black people say they are unlikely or very unlikely to get vaccinated.
Updated
This is from the Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who represents Exeter.
#Devon MPs told by frustrated local NHS bosses in our weekly #Covid19UK that the Government has banned them from releasing local #vaccination figures although they have them. Unacceptable.
— Ben Bradshaw (@BenPBradshaw) January 19, 2021
The Welsh health minister, Vaughan Gething, has accepted that citizens have been unsettled by the suggestion that the distribution of coronavirus vaccines in Wales is being staggered, but insisted that no doses are being held back.
Gething promised by the end of the week seven out of 10 care home residents and people aged over 80 would have received their first doses and argued Wales remained on course to meet its target of vaccinating all members of the top four priority groups by mid-February.
The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, faced severe criticism yesterday after saying the deployment of tens of thousands of Pfizer/BioNTech jabs was being staggered to avoid staff sitting around with nothing to do once the country got through its current supply.
Doctors’ representatives, opposition politicians and people waiting for the vaccine expressed deep concern and called for the Labour-led government to speed up its distribution. Drakeford rowed back later, insisting “nobody is holding back vaccines” and claiming all Welsh health boards were receiving the Pfizer vaccine as quickly as they could use it.
Speaking on BBC Radio Wales today, Gething said he understood why Drakeford’s original interview had an “unsettling effect” but that the first minister and other members of the government had clarified the message. He said:
We’re not holding vaccine back. We’re absolutely going as fast as possible. We’re doing a good job in increasing the pace. We need to. This is a race against the virus.
Updated
School reopening in England likely to be staggered on regional basis, says health chief
Schools are likely to see a phased reopening, based on region, rather than in one fell swoop with a lifting of lockdown, according to England’s deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries.
She told MPs on the education committee that where infection rates were already dropping in areassuch as London, schools were likely to reopen sooner than elsewhere in the country, depending on infection levels.
There was also lots of good evidence on the disastrous impact of school closures on children’s health and wellbeing, a strong defence of the role of lateral flow tests in schools and a call for schools to be allowed to gradually reopen, while the rest of society remains in lockdown as soon as infection levels allow.
Updated
Health chief defends use of lateral flow tests in schools, saying they are 'highly effective'
The Commons education committee has just finished taking evidence from Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer for England. Here are some of the main points.
- Harries defended the use of mass testing using lateral flow tests in schools. The use of these tests has been criticised because they are far less accurate than PCR tests. Harries defended their accuracy, but she said the key point was that they were effective. She said they enabled schools to pick up people who were infected but who were asymptomatic. She said:
The modelling ... [shows that] doing two natural flow tests a week, because of the very rapid turnaround and the engagement of staff - it’s a 30-minute maximum, most of these, now - means that two tests in a week is equivalent [in] effectiveness and accuracy as one PCR. That’s a combination of the speed - you can immediately take somebody who is positive out of circulation and prevent them being a risk of transmission.
She also claimed that effectiveness of the test had been misunderstood. She said:
What we are finding is it is highly effective, at probably around 80-85%, in picking up cases at their most infectious period, whereas PCR tests will pick up viral fragments over a much, much longer period of time when probably people are not infectious.
So for picking up infectious cases, particularly if they are asymptomatic, on a routine basis - they’re highly effective in removing people who are infectious out of that environment and stopping chains of transmission.
- She said that school reopening in England was likely to be staggered on a regional basis. This is from the Mail’s David Wilcock.
DCMO Jenny Harries tells MPs there is likely to be a regionally staggered re-opening of schools in England after lockdown ends https://t.co/sQCMdKxwEE
— David Wilcock (@DavidTWilcock) January 19, 2021
- She dismissed the idea that teachers should get priority for vaccination so that schools can open early. This is from the Sun’s Kate Ferguson.
Dr Jenny Harries pouring a bucket of cold water on calls for school staff to be vaccinated first to get schools reopen. Says schools will reopen when community infection rates are down. “I cannot see the link between vaccinating staff and reopening schools”
— Kate Ferguson (@kateferguson4) January 19, 2021
Updated
George Osborne, the Conservative former chancellor, has suggested that cabinet ministers - or at least some of them - should get priority for the vaccine.
It’s a peculiarly British trait that we rightly make vaccinating millions of health workers a priority, but we can’t spare a single dose for the Health Secretary leading the response to the pandemic https://t.co/ymiz76YPDY
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) January 19, 2021
On the Today programme this morning Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, said the shortages of some goods in supermarkets in Northern Ireland was nothing to do with the new post-Brexit customs rules. He said:
That’s actually something we’ve seen across other parts of the UK as well, nothing to do with leaving the EU, nothing to do with the Northern Irish protocol but actually to do with some of the challenges we saw with Covid at the Port of Dover just before Christmas and the impact that had on supply lines coming through. I have to say supermarket supply lines at the moment are in good fettle.
As the BBC’s Jayne McCormack reports, Edwin Poots, the DUP agriculture minister in Northern Ireland’s executive, has strongly rejected Lewis’s claim. Poots has been arguing that Northern Ireland could face a major crisis with food supplies because of the new regulations.
In response to @BrandonLewis claiming empty supermarket shelves in NI are due to COVID-19 and not the NI protocol, @edwinpootsmla says the SoS is like the “emperor with no clothes but instead of a small boy pointing out he’s naked, the whole crowd is shouting”
— Jayne McCormack (@BBCJayneMcC) January 19, 2021
Met commissioner says she's 'baffled' as to why police officers not getting priority for vaccine
In an interview with LBC this morning Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said that people should call the police if they were worried about neighbours repeatedly breaking coronavirus rules. She said:
The last thing I’m going to say on national radio is everyone should be shopping everybody. I don’t think that. What I do think is, if you do have concerns that somebody is persistently not complying with the restrictions, with the regulations, then, yeah, you should talk to us.
If you feel comfortable to do so, then talk to us.
Dick said there have been 97 incidents where someone has mentioned or threatened Covid before coughing at an officer, with 48 spitting attacks. Some 126 people have been charged, with nearly two-thirds receiving a custodial sentence.
She also said she was “baffled” as to why police officers are not getting priority for the vaccine. Ministers have hinted they may be prioritised in the second wave of vaccine rollout, but in the first wave – running to the spring and covering all over-50s, plus people with serious underlying health conditions – police officers are not included. Dick, who is 60, said:
In cohorts five to nine [in the priority list for phase one], you have people in what I might call my age groups and I am baffled really why, but obviously this is a decision that the government’s made so far on the basis of something called the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation), who are experts.
But in many other countries, police officers and law enforcement colleagues are being prioritised and I want my officers to get the vaccination.
Updated
Many NHS hospitals and intensive care units are “already overwhelmed”, according to Alison Pittard, dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine.
As PA Media reports, figures from the NHS in England show that a record 34,336 Covid-19 patients were in hospital in England as of 8am on Monday January 18. The figure is up 7% on a week ago, and up 94% since Christmas Day.
When asked about remarks from Matt Hancock, the health secretary, saying that the NHS was at risk of being overwhelmed but not yet at that point, Pittard said:
There are many intensive care units and hospitals around the country that are already overwhelmed - seeing unprecedented numbers of cases, large numbers of very, very sick people, many of whom are dying.
And there are staff who are almost on their knees, having been going through this non-stop for months and months and months.
So I think healthcare professionals who hear their situation to be described as not being overwhelmed is unfair.
Pittard also said she expected hospital and intensive care unit admissions to go up over the next week to 10 days, even the case numbers are starting to fall. She went on:
So we’re nowhere near out of this at the moment and I am really concerned, not just for people who have to come into hospital with Covid and come to intensive care, but to all staff who are working in intensive care at the moment.
As PA Media reports, Pittard said that some may not think that intensive care units are overwhelmed because “we are still managing to look after everyone who would benefit from coming into intensive care”. But this has only been made possible by ICU’s altering the way they work, for instance nurses being assigned multiple patients instead of just one and non-ICU staff being drafted in to help and ‘expanding’ ICUs, she added.
Johnson did not want Trump to win second term, says former cabinet secetary
To mark Donald Trump’s final day in office, the Daily Mail has published an article by Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary, in which he says that
Based on my time working for Boris Johnson in Downing Street, I believe those who have said he would have preferred a second Trump term are mistaken. That would not have been to the benefit of British or European security, to transatlantic trade, let alone the environmental agenda to which the prime minister is so committed.
Mr Biden’s administration will reset priorities much more in line with those of his former boss, Barack Obama. He will re-engage with democracies and global institutions – such as the World Health Organisation and the World Trade Organisation – that Mr Trump despised and disrupted. He will revive arms control negotiations with Iran and Russia, and rejoin the Paris treaty, which is crucial to the prospects for this year’s climate change conference in Glasgow.
This sounds entirely plausible, although in his article Sedwill does not address, or even acknowledge, the argument that, even though Trump might not have been a comfortable international partner for Johnson administration in a second term, the PM might have been cheered by another electoral victory, in a country whose politics often tracks the UK’s, for a national populist movement led by a maverick celebrity figure prone to saying things that aren’t true.
Johnson, of course, is nothing if not flexible. Only a week after Trump’s defeat, Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, the aides who probably did most to encourage Johnson’s Trumpian instincts, were out, and as my colleagues Jessica Elgot and Rajeev Syal reported only this week, Johnson is now running an administration with a more measured and reasonable tone.
Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, was also challenged to explain why the UK’s Covid death rate is currently the worst in the world by (see 9.24am) Piers Morgan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. You can watch the exchange here.
‘We cannot answer that question right now.’
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) January 19, 2021
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis says you 'can’t make international comparisons' as to why Britain has the worst Covid death rate in the world.
He tells @piersmorgan he can't answer why Britain has the worst rate. pic.twitter.com/82zULuzxyq
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Covid involved in more than third of all deaths in England and Wales at start of January, ONS figures show
The ONS has also published its latest weekly death figures for England and Wales. Here are the key points.
- Deaths involving Covid accounted for 34.1% of all deaths in England and Wales in the week ending Friday 8 January. There were 17,751 deaths overall registered that week, and 6,057 mentioned coronavirus on the death certificate - up from 2,913 the previous week.
- Excess deaths - ie, the number of deaths above the five-year average for that time of year - were running at 45.8% in week ending 8 January. But the ONS says this figure should be “treated with caution” because the Boxing Day and New Year’s Day bank holidays the previous week would have led to registrations being delayed, inflating the figures for the week ending 8 January. This chart shows the trend for excess deaths.
And this chart shows the regional figures for excess deaths in the first week of January.
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At least one person in eight in England had had coronavirus by December, ONS figures suggest
The ONS has released a new report from its Covid infection survey. Normally the survey produces figures estimating how many people have the virus at a particular point. But this one produced an estimate for what proportion of the population would have tested positive for antibodies in December.
Testing positive for antibodies means someone has had the virus in the past - although over time antibody levels in the blood decline to the point where they do not get picked up by a test, so the true proportion of people who have had the virus will be higher than the antibody figures suggest.
Here are the key findings.
- One person in eight in England in December tested positive for antibodies, meaning at least one person in eight had had the virus. This chart shows how that figure rose during 2020.
And this chart shows the regional figures for December.
- One person in 10 in Wales in December tested positive for antibodies, meaning at least one person in 10 had had the virus.
- One person in 11 in Scotland in December tested positive for antibodies, meaning at least one person in 11 had had the virus.
- One person in 13 in Northern Ireland in December tested positive for antibodies, meaning at least one person in 13 had had the virus.
Matt Hancock says Covid app has told him he has to self-isolate
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has announced that he is having to self-isolate because he has received an alert from the Covid app saying he has been close to someone who tested positive.
Last night I was alerted by the @NHSCOVID19app to self isolate so I’ll be staying at home & not leaving at all until Sunday.
— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) January 19, 2021
We all have a part to play in getting this virus under control. pic.twitter.com/MaN1EI7UyY
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Minister plays down chart showing UK's death rate currently worst in world
Good morning. Yesterday this was getting a lot of attention on Twitter - a chart showing the UK at the top of a global league table for Covid deaths.
UK currently has highest death rate in the world. 👇😒 pic.twitter.com/1la3u0lABd
— Dr Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) January 18, 2021
It was produced by the Independent, using information from the Our World in Data website. It does not cover overall Covid deaths, or overall age-standardised excess deaths during the pandemic (which the scientists say will ultimately be the best measure of how countries have performed). Instead the chart ranks countries by their average Covid death toll over the previous seven days as of yesterday. Still, it’s not a great record.
Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, was doing the broadcast interview round for the government this morning. Mostly he was asked about the vaccine rollout, where the UK is near the top on most league tables. Here is the one chart featuring major countries from the Our World in Data website - although it does not include Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, which are all outperforming the UK on this measure.
But on Sky News he was also asked about the UK coming top on the chart for current Covid deaths. When it was put to him that this suggested the UK did not have an effective public health strategy, he replied:
It’s not really appropriate, or entirely accurate, to do direct comparisons with other countries around the world at the moment. Things move at different points in the cycle. We’re not through this virus yet. But ... every single death, let alone the scale of deaths that we’ve seen from this virus, both in the UK and across the world, is one too many. It’s an utter tragedy.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The ONS publishes its latest coronavirus infection survey, as well as its weekly death figures for England and Wales.
9.30am: Boris Johnson chairs a virtual meeting of cabinet.
10am: Dr Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer for England, and other health and scientific officials give evidence to the Commons education committee about Covid and schools.
12pm: Downing Street is due to hold its daily lobby briefing.
12.30pm: A culture minister responds to a Commons urgent question about post-Brexit visa arrangements for musicians.
After 1pm: MPs begin a debate on the trade bill. As my colleague Patrick Wintour reports, the government is facing a revolt from Tory MPs backing a move to give the UK courts a say in determining whether countries are committing genocide.
After 2pm: Ministerial statement in the Scottish parliament on Covid.
Politics Live is now doubling up as the UK coronavirus live blog and, given the way the Covid crisis eclipses everything, this will continue for the foreseeable future. But we will be covering non-Covid political stories too, and when they seem more important or more interesting, they will take precedence.
Here is our global coronavirus live blog.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
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