Early evening summary
- Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, has said the South African variant of coronavirus is unlikely to become dominant in the UK. Speaking at the No 10 press conference, he acknowledged that reports about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine offering only “minimal” protection against mild or moderate illness from the South African variant (see 9.05am) were “scary” for some people. But he said people should be reassured. He said:
We have small numbers of the South African variant in the UK at the present time. And as I’ve said, I’m not seeing, and the early modelling data do not suggest, a transmissibility advantage for this virus.
So, that being the case, it’s not going to kind of overrun or overtake the current B117 virus [the Kent variant - now the dominant one in the UK] in the next few months, or that is the most likely scenario, that it won’t happen.
I don’t think that this is something that we should be concerned about right at this point in time, and I agree with you that the stories and the headlines around variant viruses and vaccines are a bit scary. And I wish they weren’t.
Van-Tam and Matt Hancock, the health secretary, also said that vaccines were being adapted to counter new variants and that people were likely to offered regular booster jab to counter the new version of the virus, as happens every year with flu.
- Hancock announced that people aged 70 and over in England are being urged to arrange to have a Covid-19 vaccine if they have not already been inoculated, in a change of tactics by the NHS.
- Boris Johnson hinted that travel restrictions might tighten, not loosen, over the coming months, as Covid cases fall, when he said that border controls would work best when infection rates were lower than they are now. (See 1.32pm.) At the press conference Van-Tam said it was impossible to say now what restrictions would be in place in the summer. But he said the more elaborate people’s plans were, the more they were at risk. He said:
How quickly [restrictions] can be released will depend upon three things - the virus, the vaccine and the extent to which the public obey the rules that are in place, which thankfully the vast majority do ...
The more elaborate your plans are for summer holidays, in terms of crossing borders, in terms of household mixing, given where we are now, I think we just have to say the more you are stepping into making guesses about the unknown at this point.
- Hancock said almost 25% of adults in the UK have now had their first dose of vaccine. And take-up has exceeded expectations, he told the press conference. He said:
We have now, as of today, vaccinated more than 12.2 million people - that’s almost one in four of all adults across the United Kingdom.
Take-up of the vaccine so far has been significantly better than we hoped for.
Based on the work we had done before the vaccination programme started and looking at the surveys, we knew that the UK had one of the most positive attitudes to vaccine uptake, but even so we thought we would get take-up of around 75%.
I’m really pleased to be able to tell you that as of midnight last night, among the over-80s, we have now given a first dose to 91%.
Among those aged between 75 and 79, it is 95%, and almost three-quarters of those aged between 70 and 74 who were the most recent group to be invited.
Earlier Ipsos MORI released polling suggesting more than 80% of people think the government is doing a good job on vaccines.
NEW - 86% say govt done good job on getting vaccines for UK - (rare for any govt to get nearly nine out of ten to be positive about anything it does) pic.twitter.com/27YLjHsqV4
— Ben Page, Ipsos MORI (@benatipsosmori) February 8, 2021
- The hostile environment for migrants means many people living in the UK with unofficial or uncertain status will be unlikely to take up coronavirus vaccinations, despite a government push for this to happen, charities have warned. In an interview with the World at One Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary, argued that the hostile environment policy had contributed to vaccine hesitancy amongst black and Asian people more generally. As HuffPost reports, she told the programme:
The whole hostile environment policy has created a situation where people are sceptical about authority, even when they have an absolute legal right to be here.
That’s all from me for today. But our coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.
Q: Will employers have to pay for the new workplace testing?
Hancock says it will be free for now.
Q: Has surge testing led to new cases of the South African variant being found?
Hancock says no further extension has been found. He says if new cases are found, that will be made public.
And that’s it. The press conference is over.
Q: The PM said today tough border controls are more important as cases fall. (See 1.32pm.) Does that mean people should prepare for tough travel restrictions of months or years?
Hancock says the number of cases of the South African variant is very low. The border rules are being tightened, he says.
Of course the government wants to lift measures when it is safe. But we need more information, he says. He says the government is taking a precautionary approach.
Van-Tam says it is too early to say. We don’t have the data yet on the impact of the vaccine. The lockdown restrictions will have to be reduced gradually. How gradually will depend on the virus, the vaccine and how people comply with the rules.
On travel, he says he cannot give people a proper answer.
Q: Will the rule of six return next month? And will restrictions be lifted first for outdoor activities?
Hancock says it is too early to speculate on this. The PM will publish a roadmap on 22 February, he says.
Q: Test and trace staff are being let go. Is that wise?
Hancock says 98% of contacts are reached within 24 hours. The service is performing “brilliantly”, he says.
The number of cases is coming down, he says.
Van-Tam says people should think of the way we handle seasonal flu. The key is to manage it, and to ensure it does not overwhelm hospital.
The focus is on ensuring it is managed in the community, not in hospitals.
And that allows an opening up so that people can live more normally, he says.
Q: What is the plan if we cannot stop suppression of the virus?
Hancock says he has a high degree of confidence that the vaccines will work.
And there is a plan to update the vaccines.
Q: But are we aiming to eliminate? Or will we have to live with it?
Hancock says everyone would like to eliminate it. But you have to be vigilant, he says.
He suggests it will be like flu. The flu jab is updated every year.
Q: How many cases of the South African variant have been found?
Hancock says it is 147. There have not been any new cases found in the past two days, he says.
Q: What are the chances of keeping the South African variant suppressed?
Van-Tam says he does not think it has a transmissibility advantage. So he does not think it will over-take the B117 variant.
He accepts that people are seeing “scary” headlines, but he says he wishes they weren’t.
He says for many weeks now his work has been focusing on what happens next with vaccines.
Q: Can the second dose be adjusted to deal with the South African variant? Or will it be a booster vaccine in the autumn?
Van-Tam says it is likely to be the later.
With viral vector vaccines, or messenger RNA ones, you can adapt them quickly. But those new versions still need to be tested, he says. That is why a booster vaccine in the autumn is more likely.
But he says the question implies the current vaccines won’t work. They are almost certain to work against the Kent variant (B117), he says.
Q: When are frontline police officers likely to get the vaccine?
Hancock says that is an important question. He thanks the police for what they do.
He says the vaccine rollout focuses on those most at risk first. Any officer over 50 will be part of the initial rollout.
Then the government will consider in what order to vaccinate the under-50s. It will consider the case for focusing on people most in contact with others, or most likely to pass it on.
He says no decision has been made on this yet.
Van-Tam says the current vaccines are still likely to have a substantial impact when it comes to reducing the risk of serious illness from the South African variant.
He says people should not delay getting the vaccine so they can wait until a modified one is developed.
People can always get a top-up vaccine later, he says.
He says now it is time to start thinking about the need for regular or annual booster vaccines.
He says people should not feel panicky. They should feel reassured. The government is being vigilant. A lot of work is being done behind the scenes, he says.
Van-Tam says no reason to think South African variant will become dominant in UK
Prof Jonathan Van-Tam says the South African variant, B1351, is present in UK but not dominant.
He says the early data does not suggest it has a transmissibility advantage over the current variant dominant in the UK. That means there is no reason to think it will catch up, or overtake, the virus dominant in the UK (B117).
Hancock ends by summing up what is being done to tackle new variants.
Surge testing is being carried out, he says.
The government is working with vaccine producers on top-up jabs that could tackle new variants, he says.
And he says the government is building up the capacity to produce those vaccines in the UK.
Workplace testing being expanded to firms with more than 50 employees, Hancock says
Hancock says from today workplace testing is being expanded. It will be offered to all businesses with more than 50 employees that are currently open.
Hancock urges over-70s in England to contact NHS if they have not yet received vaccine offer
Hancock says until now the NHS has asked people to wait to be invited to get a vaccination. But now that is changing, he says.
If people live in England, and are over 70 and have not been contacted, they should now contact the NHS to get an appointment, he says. He says the best way to do this is through the online national booking service.
Updated
Hancock says 91% of over-80s have accepted vaccination
Hancock says originally the government thought it would have a take-up rate of 75%.
But he says the take-up rate among over-80s has been 91%.
Among those aged 75 to 79, take-up is 95%, he says.
Amongst those aged 70 to 74, almost three-quarters have accepted the invitation to have a jab, he says.
And among eligible care home residents, take-up is 93%, he says.
Updated
Almost quarter of adults in UK have had first dose of vaccine, Hancock says
Hancock says it is two months to the day since the vaccination programme started.
He says 12.2 million people have now had their first dose of a vaccine. That is almost one in four of all adults in the UK, he says.
Matt Hancock starts with the latest hospital numbers.
And he says on average there have been 841 deaths a day over the past week.
Matt Hancock's press conference
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is about to take the No 10 press conference. He will be appearing with Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, and Nikki Kanani, the medical director of primary care at NHS England.
Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, told MPs on the European scrutiny committee that he would discuss the issues with the Northern Ireland protocol with the European commission’s Maroš Šefčovič on Thursday. “Progress is being made but we are very far from resolving all those problems,” he told the committee.
Updated
UK records 333 more deaths and 14,014 cases - lowest daily totals for more than six weeks
The UK government’s coronavirus dashboard has just been updated. Here are the key figures.
- The UK has recorded 333 further deaths - its lowest daily total for more than six weeks. Reported deaths are always low on a Monday, because some figures do not get processed at the weekend, but the daily total has not been this low since Sunday 27 December, when it was 317. The total number of deaths over the last seven days is 22.4% down on the previous week.
- The UK has recorded 14,104 further Covid cases - its lowest daily total for almost nine weeks. The daily total has not been this low since Tuesday 8 December, when 12,282 new cases were recorded.
- The number of patients in hospital on Thursday in the UK with Covid was 29,326 - its first day below 30,000 for more than a month. Thursday is the most recent day for which a figure is available on the dashboard. The last time hospital numbers were this low was Sunday 3 January, when 29,009 Covid patients were in hospital.
-
There were 278,988 people in the UK who received their first dose of a vaccine on Sunday. On Saturday the figure was 549,808.
Updated
Starmer says polls have been 'step in right direction' for Labour over past year
Two new polls are out today that are both disappointing for Labour.
YouGov has a poll showing the Conservatives four points head of Labour on voting intention - their largest lead since the autumn. It also says that Sir Keir Starmer has lost the five-point lead he had over Boris Johnson on ‘who would make the best PM?’ and that the pair are now level pegging on this measure.
And Ipsos MORI has released its February political monitor (pdf) which also shows the Tories opening up their biggest lead for some months.
Perhaps more worryingly for Labour, the poll shows that the government has done a lot to repair the damage caused last autumn by its perceived mishandling of the pandemic. At one point its net approval rating on this measure was -20. Now it is -8.
Asked about Labour’s poll ratings, Starmer told reporters:
We started in a very poor place a year or so ago, 24 points behind the government. We’re now getting to a position where on the polls we’re about even, so that’s a step in the right direction.
But we’ve got a long way to go between now and 2024 and we’re going to be working hard at this with real determination, every day, every week, every month, every year, into that election in 2024.
South African variant 'single biggest risk' for UK, says Starmer
Sir Keir Starmer has described the South African variant as the “single biggest risk” for the UK at the moment and restated his call for tougher border controls. Speaking to reporters during a visit to Essex, he said:
I think the South African variant is the single biggest risk at the moment.
It’s very important therefore that we secure our borders.
We have known about the South African variant for some time. If you can believe it, it’s going to be 50 days from knowing about the variant to border restrictions, quarantining in hotels, coming in.
Add to that, and this is probably the most significant thing, a number of other countries we now know have the South African variant, and they are not even in the government scheme for quarantining in hotels.
This is leaving a back door open at a vital stage in the battle against the virus.
At least 147 cases of the South African variant have been identified in the UK. (See 9.31am.) In overall terms, as a proportion of all cases, that number is tiny, but the variant has been in the UK at least since December, and has been spreading in the community, and so the actual prevalence is almost certain to be higher. (See 11.17am.)
The South African variant is worrying because, like the Kent variant, which is now the dominant variant in the UK, it is much more transmissible than the original version, and because, unlike the Kent variant, it is more resistant to the vaccines currently available.
Updated
Northern Ireland has recorded 296 further coronavirus cases, and 12 further deaths.
A week ago today the equivalent figures were 314 and 11.
The Department of Health #COVID19 dashboard has been updated.
— Department of Health (@healthdpt) February 8, 2021
296 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. Sadly, a further 12 deaths have been reported (3 outside the reporting period).https://t.co/YN16dmGzhv pic.twitter.com/HyHuY74NIM
A total of 10,991,365 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between December 8 and February 7, according to provisional NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 229,826 on the previous day’s figures.
As PA Media reports, of this number, 10,519,729 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 229,514 on the previous day, while 471,636 were a second dose, an increase of 312.
At his news briefing earlier Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister, said the incidence rate for Wales is now around 115 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people. He also said the test positivity rate had fallen to below 10%. He went on:
These figures are still high but a lot lower than the very high rates we were seeing just before Christmas, when we had overall rates of more than 650 cases of coronavirus per 100,000 people and a positivity rate of more than 25%.
The R number is below 1 in Wales. The most recent estimate from Sage is that R is between 0.7 and 0.9 in Wales.
There are encouraging signs that the number of people needing hospital treatment for coronavirus is starting to fall.
The number of people with confirmed coronavirus in our hospitals is at the lowest number since November 8 and we’ve also seen a reduction in the number of people with coronavirus who need intensive care.
Gething also said critical care capacity in Wales was currently operating at 123%.
Updated
Last week the journalist Peter Oborne published a powerful and compelling polemic called The Assault on Truth. Its subtitle, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism, sums up the overall thrust, and most of it is about Johnson’s dishonesty, and why it matters. Oborne, who worked as political editor at the Spectator when Johnson was its editor, says that in a career in political reporting lasting almost three decades, “I have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson.”
At the No 10 lobby briefing, Allegra Stratton, Johnson’s press secretary, was asked what the PM felt about this verdict from his old colleague. She sidestepped the question, saying she would not comment because she was not aware of the book. Asked if she personally thought the PM was honest and trustworthy, she replied: “I wouldn’t be working for the prime minister unless I believed he was honest and trustworthy.”
Updated
NHS England has recorded 313 further coronavirus hospital deaths. The details are here.
A week ago today the equivalent figure was 356, and two weeks ago today the equivalent figure was 609.
Updated
The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is effective against the coronavirus variant that emerged from South Africa, according to a new study. The PA Media report goes on:
In a study of 20 vaccine recipients, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, America, found that the vaccine neutralises the virus with the N501Y and E484K mutations ...
In the UTMB study published today, after testing the sera samples - obtained from blood - authors found evidence that the mutant viruses were neutralised - destroyed by the sera panel.
However, there was variation as neutralisation against the E484K mutation was slightly lower than neutralisation against the N501Y mutation, according to the study published in Nature Medicine.
New strains of the virus that appeared in the UK and South Africa share the same N501Y mutation.
A separate South African strain has an E484K mutation, but a number of cases have also been detected in the UK causing concern.
These mutations are located in the viral spike protein, and could potentially increase the affinity of the viral spike for the ACE2 receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 is known to bind.
Researchers say the N501Y mutation also seems to expand the range of hosts the virus can infect to include mice.
Hotel contracts for quarantine scheme launching next week not yet signed, No 10 admits
Here are two of the top lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
- No 10 said no contracts have yet been awarded to hotels expected to manage the hotel quarantine system due to come into force a week today. The prime minister’s spokesman said:
Last week the Department of Health issued a commercial specification to hotels near ports and airports. This asked for proposals on how they could deliver managed quarantine facilities. No formal contracts have been awarded yet.
- Downing Street said forcing someone to have the coronavirus vaccine as a condition for doing a job would be “discriminatory”. Echoing what the health minister Edward Argar said earlier (see 10.43am), the PM’s spokesman said:
Taking a vaccine is not mandatory and it would be discriminatory to force somebody to take one.
The spokesman did not elaborate, but any attempt to make having a vaccine mandatory could be open to the charge of being discriminatory on race grounds because of the evidence showing that vaccine hesitancy is markedly higher among black and Asian people than it is among white people.
Updated
NIESR slashes UK growth forecast amid Covid-19 second wave
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a leading thinktank, has slashed its forecasts for growth this year after the delay to recovery caused by the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, my colleague Larry Elliott reports.
Covid deaths in Wales pass 5,000
Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister, said today he was “truly sorry” after the number Covid deaths in Wales recorded by Public Health Wales passed 5,000. Gething told reporters:
I’m deeply sorry for every single life that’s been lost, every family who’s been affected.
Right from the outset of this pandemic, we made a point of recognising that these aren’t just numbers, these are people who are loved and valued and leave others behind.
Gething said the Welsh government had taken “extraordinary measures” to reduce the number of deaths. He went on:
Despite all of that, we know that more than 5,000 people have lost their lives.
I’m afraid we can be terribly confident that without the measures that we’ve all taken together, more people would have come to harm and more families would be grieving the loss of a loved one.
That’s why it’s so important that we all stick with what we’re doing to help drive down rates even further.
Updated
One million Scots set to be vaccinated by end of week as jab rate triples
Nicola Sturgeon has predicted that at least 1 million people in Scotland will have had their first Covid vaccination by the end of this week, after the rate of vaccinations dramatically increased.
In her regular briefing, the first minister said 866,823 people had had their first dose by Monday morning. The belated opening last week of mass vaccination centres, which followed widespread criticism of dose rates in Scotland, led to a tripling of daily vaccination rates.
Sturgeon said nearly 100% of older care home residents had now been vaccinated, as had over 90% of over-80s.
The number of positive Covid cases was continuing to decline: there were 928 positives detected on Sunday. The number in hospital fell by 38 to 1,672, with 108 people in intensive care, and five deaths following a positive test reported. That took Scotland’s total fatalities under that measure to 6,443.
Sturgeon also announced that soon 21 fire stations in towns and villages across the Highlands and Argyll would start offering drop-in virus testing after a successful NHS Highlands pilot programme in Thurso and Lochgilphead. That would speed up community testing, she said, in harder to reach rural areas.
Updated
Johnson says border controls most effective when Covid rates lower than they are now
This is what Boris Johnson said in his interview for broadcasters in Derby when he was asked if the government needed to go further on border control. He said that border controls worked best when Covid rates are lower than they are now.
They are most effective, border controls, when you’ve got the rate of infection down in your country.
And at the moment we’ve greatly reduced the rate of infection from the peak, where it was a few weeks ago, but it’s still extremely high and for border controls really to make that final difference so you can isolate new variants as they come in, you need to have infections really much lower so you can track them as they spread.
Don’t forget, we in the UK are capable of seeing variants arise here - just in the UK, the Kent variant arose here - but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be relying very much on border controls as we get the rates of infection down overall.
This would help to explain why the government has rejected calls to impose hotel quarantine on all people arriving in the UK. Instead the new hotel quarantine arrangements, which are not coming into force until later this month, will only apply to arrivals from certain high-risk countries.
Updated
Johnson refuses to rule out extending school summer term to help pupils catch up
In the interview Johnson was asked if new concerns about the spread of the South African variant might lead to a delay in lockdown restrictions being lifted.
In response, Johnson said vaccines offered a “massive benefit” and that he had no doubt that generally vaccines were going to offer “the way out”.
Asked about border controls, he said they were “most effective” when Covid cases were low in the country imposing those controls.
Asked if the school term would be extended into the summer to help pupils catch up with the learning they have lost, he did not rule this out as an option, but instead said that he would set out is plans in the week beginning 22 February.
Helping children catch up was the “single biggest priority for the government”, he said.
Johnson says government 'very confident' of Oxford vaccine despite South African variant concern
Sky News is broadcasting an interview that Boris Johnson has given during a visit to SureScreen Diagnostics in Derby.
He says the lateral flow tests being made by the firm are highly sophisticated and very useful. They are particularly useful for identifying asymptomatic cases, he says.
Q: Are the concerns about the Oxford vaccine and the South African variant likely to affect the school opening timetable?
Johnson says the government is confident about the vaccine.
We’re very confident in all the vaccines that we are using, and I think it’s important for people to bear in mind that all of them, we think, are effective in delivering a high degree of protection against serious illness and death, which is the most important thing.
We will be continuing to study the results, the effectiveness, of the vaccine rollout, and that is going very, very fast indeed. And we will be looking at the ways in which the population is starting to respond to the vaccines as we prepare to say what we’re going to do in the week of 22 [February], and what kind of roadmap [for lifting restrictions] we want to lay out.
Updated
Labour says government 'lost control of spending' during pandemic
Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, has delivered a substantial speech this morning on how public procurement would work under a Labour government. As the party set out in a preview press notice, she said that during the Covid crisis “almost £2bn in total has been spent on ‘crony’ contracts going to Conservative friends and donors”.
In the speech Reeves said Labour would “oversee the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation”. She summarised the procurement policy announcements in this Guardian article.
And Reeves also used the speech to accuse the Conservatives of losing control of public spending. It is an argument that Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, also used in her party conference speech last year, and it marks an attempt to contest the Tories on what is perceived as their home territorial. More often it is the Conservatives accusing Labour of being reckless with public spending.
Reeves said:
If ever there should have been a wake-up call, it was in September last year when Sage met and reflected on the performance of the government’s approach to test, track and isolate and said: “The relatively low levels of engagement with the system coupled with testing delays and likely poor rates of adherence with self-isolation suggests that this system is having a marginal impact on transmission.”
A £22 bn budget.
All that money, only making a marginal difference. The Tory government lost control of spending just as they lost control of the virus.
As we see the test and trace shortfall enter the news this week yet again, it’s not too late for the government to rethink their approach on this crucial tool in our fight against Covid.
It is lazy, wasteful and it makes me so angry.
At another point in the speech Reeves said that some of the government’s procurement spending during the pandemic had amounted to “unforgivable waste”.
Updated
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will take the Downing Street press conference at 5pm, No 10 has announced.
Hancock has also announced today that the government has secured 20m lateral flow tests from a contract with the Derby-based manufacturer SureScreen Diagnostics. These are the first British lateral flow tests to be validated by Public Health England.
In an interview on the Today programme Prof Peter Openshaw, an immunologist at Imperial College London and a member of the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) suggested that people should be cautious about the new research about the impact of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on the South African variant. It was only a “very small trial”, he said, and he pointed out that the full study has not yet been published.
He also said that in the longer term it would be useful to develop a vaccine that could be distributed via a nasal spray. He explained:
There’s still question about whether [the vaccine] inhibits replication in the nose, and therefore prevent spread. And for that we really need to develop vaccines which are based on nasal sprays and induce what we call a mucosal immune response. So that’s a very rational way to go.
But the initial vaccines are given as an injection and induce a very good response in your bloodstream, and also protect the lung pretty well. Remember, the whole of your blood volume goes through your lung very minute ... So your lungs are much better protected by a blood response in terms of antibodies. But getting a nasal response would be a really good way to develop vaccines in the future.
Alex Salmond has said he will not appear before MSPs on Tuesday morning after strongly criticising their investigation into a botched Scottish government inquiry into sexual harassment claims against him, my colleague Severin Carrell reports.
Restrictions may be needed for longer if South African variant becomes widespread in UK, says expert adviser
Dr Mike Tildesley, an academic at Warwick University who specialises in disease modelling and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M), which advises the government, told the Today programme this morning that it was “very possible” the South African variant was already quite widely spread in the UK. He explained:
The fact we’re starting to see cases in the hundreds, albeit in the low hundreds, means that unless we’ve really got on top of this quickly, I would expect we could see quite a few more cases coming over the next few weeks and possibly quite a little bit more widespread, so it’s a real concern.
Asked if the South African variant may have already spread quite widely, he said: “It’s very possible.”
He also said that, if the South African variant were to become widespread in the UK, restrictions might have to stay in place for longer. He said:
If that is the case and actually people can still get infected and still pass on the infection with the South African variant, and of course if it does become widespread across the country, then that has significant implications because it means that even with high levels of vaccination there will be a lot of people that could potentially get infected and could potentially pass it on and it may mean that more restrictions might be needed for longer if we can’t get on top of this.
Tildesley was one of the authors of the Warwick University paper (pdf) released by Sage at the end of last week highlighting the dangers of lifting restrictions too soon. (See 10.05am.)
Updated
In response to today’s Guardian splash about the Queen lobbying the government in the 1970s to change a draft law to prevent her from having to reveal the extent of her wealth, Buckingham Place has denied that she blocked legislation. A spokeswoman for the palace said:
Queen’s Consent is a parliamentary process, with the role of sovereign purely formal. Consent is always granted by the monarch where requested by government. Any assertion that the sovereign has blocked legislation is simply incorrect.
But the Guardian story does not say that she blocked legislation. You can read it here.
GUARDIAN: Queen lobbied for change in law to hide her wealth #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/5ALunTNghY
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 7, 2021
Employers should not be making vaccines compulsory for staff, says minister
According to a story (paywall) in today’s Daily Telegraph, even though the government is not in favour of introducing “vaccine passports” that would allow access to certain jobs or services to be limited to people who have been vaccinated, in private ministers believe employers can insist on their staff being vaccinated. Gordon Rayner reports:
Whitehall sources believe that companies who adopt a “jab for a job” stance are protected by current health and safety laws which require workers to protect not only themselves, but also colleagues from harm.
One government source said: “If someone is working in an environment where people haven’t been vaccinated, it becomes a public health risk.
“Health and safety laws say you have to protect other people at work, and when it becomes about protecting other people the argument gets stronger.
“If there is clear evidence that vaccines prevent transmission, the next stage is to make sure more and more people are taking up the vaccine.
“If people have allergies or other reasons for not getting jabbed, then of course they should be exempt, but where it’s an unjustified fear, we have got to help people get into the right place.”
On the Today programme Edward Argar, the health minister, refused to say whether existing law allowed employers to do this. He said he could not comment because he was not a lawyer.
But, when asked if he approved of companies like Pimlico Plumbers requiring staff to have the vaccine, or care homes, he said that he didn’t. He replied:
I am not saying to anyone that they should be mandating or making particular activities contingent upon having the jab. That’s not how we do things in this country.
There are plenty of routes to make sure that workplaces are safe and Covid ... I would encourage everyone to take the vaccine - I’ll take it as soon as I’m eligible because I think it saves lives and prevents disease - but we do not in this country mandate such things.
He also said the government had no plans to make the vaccine mandatory, or to ensure people had to have had it, to “undertake particular activities”.
Health chief urges PM not to lift restrictions too soon in case 'virus bounces straight back'
NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and other NHS trusts, has urged the government to be careful not to lift restrictions too soon. Chris Hopson, its chief executive, told BBC Breakfast:
I think trust leaders are really clear that we need to be careful about relaxing the restrictions too quickly, because we made that mistake last year and look what happened in the north after the summer - the virus has bounced straight back.
We’ve all worked incredibly hard over the last nine months as a nation - and over the last few months, last few weeks in terms of this immediate set of restrictions.
What we mustn’t do is rush to lift them, and then find the virus bounces straight back.
Hopson said NHS Providers was writing to the prime minister urging him to consider a number of factors when considering easing restrictions, including: case numbers and infection spread, hospital admissions, vaccinations, the new variants of the virus and ensuring the test and trace programme is “capable of identifying those mutations and genomically sequencing large numbers of tests really rapidly”.
NHS Providers is not the only organisation urging Boris Johnson to take a cautious approach to lifting the lockdown. At the end of last week Sage, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, published two papers published by academics ahead of a Sage meeting in mid-January and both of them highlighting the dangers of lifting restrictions too soon.
Here is an extract from the vaccine impact forecast (pdf) from a team at the University of Warwick. They said:
Even in the best case assumptions for vaccine efficacy, vaccination alone proves insufficient to allow complete NPI [non-pharmaceutical interventions - ie, lockdown measures] release within the year without significant further disease burden. With the new aggressive Covid strain, likely transmission efficacies prove insufficient to prevent further infection outbreaks across the population. This means that the proportion of individuals that do not accept the vaccine together with the proportion for whom it is ineffective in protecting, may still account for significant further severe disease even after the program is completed. We conclude that vaccination must be combined with other interventions in order to provide an escape strategy.
And here is an extract from the report (pdf) from a team at Imperial College London.
Our results highlight the importance of speeding-up vaccine rollout, and suggest that a more cautious approach to gradually lifting NPIs may need to be considered than the ones modelled in this report.
Updated
For months now scientists have been saying that people are likely to need annual booster jabs against coronavirus, as they do with the flu vaccine. Edward Argar, the health minister, effectively confirmed that this would happen during his morning interview round this morning. He told Sky News:
What we would all expect is every year we have our flu booster jabs, or our flu jabs, it would not be unreasonable to suggest something similar here.
Argar said the virus would “always try to outwit us”. He added:
We’ve just got to make sure we get ahead of the game and we outwit it.
Prof Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said this morning that the research about the impact the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has against the South African variant (see 9.05am) was a setback. He told Times Radio:
I think we can still win; it’s just got so much tougher again ...
I think the number of variants that can come out of this spike antigen is finite, and we’re not going to be playing this catch-up game for ever.
There is an end in sight and there is tweaking to be done, but I think we’ll get there.
The sort of biggest worry is that it’s not just about South Africa, is it, it’s about our homegrown versions, and the modification to the Kent variant, and the idea that we’ve got to be so on our guard and track and tracing it so carefully that we don’t expand our homegrown version.
Updated
Only 147 cases of South African variant found in UK so far, says health minister
Edward Argar, the health minister, was the “voice of the government” on the airwaves this morning, talking about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and other matters on his interview round. He said that only 147 cases of the South African variant have so far been identified in the UK. He told the Today programme:
The latest figures I have, which may be a day or so out, is 147 cases in this country. So it’s still very much not the dominant strain here, the dominant strain here is very much the historic one, the one we’ve been dealing with since last year, and to a large degree the so-called Kent variant.
Last week the government began a programme of “surge testing” in various parts of England where the South African variant has been found not linked to travel. But at least one of these cases dated from December, suggesting the South African variant has had plenty of time to spread a bit more widely.
Updated
Minister urges confidence in Oxford vaccine despite South African variant concern
Good morning. At the weekend it emerged that some new research suggests that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which is the main one being used in the UK, provides only “minimal” protection against mild or moderate illness from the South African variant of coronavirus (known as B1351 or 501Y.v2). The findings come from a small survey which has not been subject to peer review. This does not mean the vaccine won’t stop people getting seriously ill or dying from the South African variant (evidence suggests it still will), and the South African variant has only been identified in a relatively small number of cases in the UK so far.
Still, it’s a reminder that the vaccine alone does not provide a miracle solution.
Here is the press release from Oxford University about the research. And here is the Guardian’s story about it.
In an article for the Daily Telegraph, Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, has said people should still have confidence in the vaccine deployment programme. He says:
Our brilliant scientists and medical advisers are now working on the potential for new versions of existing vaccines to offer further protections against Covid variants. Last week we announced an agreement with the manufacture CureVac to allow new varieties of vaccines based on messenger RNA technology to be developed quickly and to procure 50 million doses of a new version of a vaccine, if it is required.
But we should bear in mind that recent studies show the vaccines being deployed right now across the UK appear to work well against the Covid-19 variants currently dominant in the UK. In terms of other variants, not in the UK, we need to be aware that even where a vaccine has reduced efficacy in preventing infection there may still be good efficacy against severe disease, hospitalisation, and death. This is vitally important for protecting the healthcare system.
While it is right and necessary to prepare for the deployment of an updated vaccine, we can take confidence from the current roll out and the protection it will provide all of us against this terrible disease.
There will be more on this debate as the day goes on.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11am: Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, gives a speech on cronyism in government procurement. In a Guardian article setting out her argument, she says “cutting the cronyism and waste that comes with outsourcing, we can rebuild the foundations of our public services and strengthen the resilience of our communities and our country”.
12pm: Downing Street is expected to hold its daily lobby briefing.
12.15pm: Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister, holds a coronavirus briefing.
12.15pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is expected to hold a coronavirus briefing.
2.30pm: Priti Patel, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
2.45pm: Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence to the Commons European scrutiny committee about Brexit.
5pm: Downing Street may hold a press conference.
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.
Updated
