Evening summary
Here’s a roundup of what happened today:
- Passengers on flights into the UK from India must now enter hotel quarantine as the country is officially added to the UK’s coronavirus travel red list. As of 4am on Friday, people returning from India must quarantine in a government-approved hotel for 10 days.
- Hospitals in India have been consumed by a desperate scramble for oxygen after the country recorded the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus cases for a second consecutive day, pushing health services to the brink.
- Coronavirus vaccines “remain out of reach” in the poorest countries. In a report on Friday, marking the first anniversary of the COVAX dose-sharing facility, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has denounced “inequities” in vaccine distribution.
- Mark Drakeford, the first minister in Wales, has denied that his decision to bring forward the easing of some restrictions in Wales by two weeks is to do with the forthcoming Senedd election. The Welsh Labour leader said the changes are due to the creation of “extra headroom” in the public health situation amid criticism from opposition parties.
- One shot of the Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reduces coronavirus infections by nearly two-thirds and protects older and more vulnerable people as much as younger, healthy individuals, a study has found.
- Infection levels in England continue to fall. Around one in 610 people in private households in England had Covid-19 in the week to April 16, according to the latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
- England’s R number has risen slightly to between 0.8 and 1, according to latest figures released by by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
- The public should be able to ditch face masks over the summer as vaccines do the heavy lifting in controlling Covid-19, government scientific advisers believe.
- Europe’s drug regulator reiterated on Friday that benefits of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine outweigh any risks, after determining that serious side-effects of rare blood clots are likely to occur in one out of 100,000 vaccinated people, according to Reuters.
We are closing this liveblog shortly. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you have a restful weekend.
Margaret Keenan, who made history when she was the first person in the world to receive a Covid vaccine following clinical approval, has given an interview to the AFP news agency.
It was the shot in the arm that made history: in December last year British grandmother Margaret Keenan became the first person in the Western world to get an approved coronavirus vaccine, kicking off a global campaign to end the pandemic.
Now, close to a billion people Covid jabs – both first and second doses – have been given out globally, and Keenan said she is proud to have been the first.
“It really is the best thing I’ve ever done,” the former jewellery shop owner said.
She got her shot on December 8 – just a week before her 91st birthday – and says she is now looking forward to going on holiday, after only retiring four years ago.
She also hopes her inaugural vaccine will inspire others to follow in her steps.
“I just feel really honoured to have had it done, to have been the first and to have got the ball rolling,” Keenan said this week during a call with the state-run National Health Service (NHS).
“I’m telling everyone to go and get it... I hope everyone comes forward.”
She got her first dose less than a week after UK regulators became the first in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for general use.
They have since approved several other jabs, and an army of health officials and volunteers have now administered nearly 45 million doses - one of the most successful efforts globally.
Keenan praised the NHS for its pivotal role in the UK’s vaccine rollout, calling its efforts “incredible” and the cherished institution “wonderful”.
Delhi hospitals issue SOS alerts over oxygen supplies as India’s Covid crisis mounts
Hospitals in India have been consumed by a desperate scramble for oxygen after the country recorded the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus cases for a second consecutive day, pushing health services to the brink.
Hospitals in Delhi issued SOS alerts on Friday, saying they had only a few hours’ supply of oxygen left and pleading for government help, while social media was flooded with requests for oxygen cylinders, shared by people seeking urgent care for their relatives.
Special train services began moving tanks of oxygen from steel plants to the worst affected areas in an attempt to relieve the crisis. Shortages are so severe that some states deployed armed police to guard supplies, following reports of theft by desperate families.
Hospitals across northern and western India, including Delhi, were running out of beds and oxygen, according to officials and doctors. “Oxygen will last another two hours,” said Ganga Ram hospital in Delhi in a statement on Friday morning. The hospital, which is treating 500 Covid patients, warned of an impending crisis.
Read the full story here:
The UK Department of Health and Social Care has posted an update on vaccine distribution.
#COVID19 VACCINE UPDATE: Daily figures on the total number of COVID-19 vaccine doses that have been given in the UK.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) April 23, 2021
As of 23 April, 45,012,308 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given in the UK.
Visit the @PHE_uk dashboard for more info:
▶️ https://t.co/cQkuLQglz1 pic.twitter.com/9xlWJKsNYO
Peter Arlett, the EMA’s head of data analytics and methods task force, said the AstraZeneca vaccine is “highly effective at preventing infection, and therefore hospitalisation and death”.
He said:
Today nine graphics have been published for the three outcomes – hospitalisations, ICU (intensive care unit) admissions and deaths avoided – assuming an 80% vaccine effectiveness over a four-month period, and three levels of virus exposure – low, medium and high.
As an example of the results of the work, we observed that hospital admissions prevented exceeds blood clots across all age categories and all virus exposure levels.
ICU admissions prevented exceeds blood clots, across all age categories for medium and high virus exposures.
And deaths prevented exceeds blood clots in those (aged) above 30 for high virus exposure, above 40 for medium virus exposure, and above 60 for low virus exposure.
The benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks and the work we introduce today, puts these very rare blood clots into the context of Covid hospitalisations prevented, intensive care admissions prevented, and deaths prevented.
Importantly, the data show that the benefits of vaccination increase with age and increasing levels of infection in the community.
The European commission said it expects to seal the world’s biggest vaccine supply deal within days, buying up to 1.8bn doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for the next few years, Reuters writes.
Speaking during a visit to Pfizer’s vaccine plant in Puurs, Belgium, Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines would be delivered over 2021-23.
The agreement would be enough to inoculate the 450m EU population for two years.
It is the third contract agreed by the bloc with the two companies, which have already agreed to supply 600m doses of the two-dose vaccine this year under two previous contracts.
EU regulator reiterates benefits of AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh risks
Europe’s drug regulator reiterated on Friday that benefits of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine outweigh any risks, after determining that serious side-effects of rare blood clots are likely to occur in one out of 100,000 vaccinated people, according to Reuters.
There was insufficient data on the vaccine from Europe to determine if blood clot risks with low blood platelets would differ with the each dose of the vaccine, or to provide context on its benefits and risks with regards to gender, the European Medicines Agency said.
Read more here:
Jails pose a threat of unleashing Covid variants of concern into the wider community, government scientific advisers have warned, with “universal” vaccination of inmates and prison staff recommended as the best way to mitigate the risk.
A report from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) on Covid-19 transmission in prisons says that even as prevalence of the virus decreases in the community, prisons will remain at high risk of outbreaks and may act as “a potential reservoir and amplifier of infection for the community”.
The advisers say prisons have had the largest single outbreaks in the country and infections rates among prisoners are more than twice that of the general population, as are mortality and hospitalisation rates.
They say that control of infection coming into the prison will become increasingly challenging as numbers of prisoners increase to normal levels. While the severe restrictions in place have gone some way to reducing infections, they are not 100% effective, and modelling shows vaccination of all prisoners and staff is the best way to reduce the risk.
The report says: “Whilst community prevalence decreases, prisons will continue to remain at high risk of outbreaks, and may also act as a potential reservoir and amplifier of infection for the community, unless there are high levels or immunity and/or extensive restrictions and infection prevention and control (IPC) measures in place.
“There is a risk that variants of concern could amplify rapidly within a prison environment, compromising not only the health of those in prison, but also wider community health security.”
Read more here:
NHS England data shows a total of 4,663,807 jabs were given to people in London between December 8 and April 22, including 3,467,368 first doses and 1,196,439 second doses.
This compares with 5,414,712 first doses and 1,755,771 second doses given to people in the Midlands, a total of 7,170,483.
The breakdown for the other regions is:
- East of England: 3,338,442 first doses and 1,177,452 second doses, making 4,515,894 in total
- North East and Yorkshire: 4,431,426 first and 1,581,490 second doses (6,012,916)
- North West: 3,555,687 first and 1,324,477 second doses (4,880,164)
- South East: 4,569,505 first and 1,535,334 second doses (6,104,839)
- South West: 3,058,274 first and 1,088,516 second doses (4,146,790)
A total of 37,687,736 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between December 8 and April 22, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 449,663 on the previous day.
NHS England said 27,995,196 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 103,988 on the previous day, while 9,692,540 were a second dose, an increase of 345,675.
The public should be able to ditch face masks over the summer as vaccines do the heavy lifting in controlling Covid-19, government scientific advisers believe.
Step four of the government’s road map for England currently states that all legal limits on social contact will be removed by 21 June at the earliest, when restrictions on large events such as festivals are also expected to ease.
Scientists advising the government say there is nothing currently in the data to suggest that people will not be able to enjoy a relatively normal summer, though coronavirus cases may well rise as the autumn approaches.
Asked about mask-wearing in the coming months, one source said that vaccines are working so well, and there is such good vaccine uptake among members of the public, that things will return to much more like normal life over the summer months, with cases dropping very low, particularly in May.
However, masks and possibly other measures may be needed next autumn and winter if cases surge, they said.
Nevertheless, the general view among scientific advisers is that the spike in cases in winter will be lower than in the past due to high levels of immunity and vaccination.
The source said that what happens will depend on people’s behaviours as well as measures such as increased ventilation indoors, good hand hygiene, and whether people isolate when they display symptoms – seen as critical to controlling the spread.
Updated
The coronavirus reproduction number, or R-value, in England is between 0.8 and 1, according to the latest government figures. Last week, the figure was between 0.7 and 1.
R represents the average number of people each Covid-19 positive person goes on to infect. When the figure is above 1, an outbreak can grow exponentially, but when it is below 1, it means the epidemic is shrinking.
An R number between 0.8 and 1 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between eight and 10 other people.
Updated
The first minister, Mark Drakeford, told the Welsh government briefing the rates of coronavirus in the country had fallen faster than he had anticipated, which had allowed some restrictions to be eased earlier than planned.
“This is preliminary of course but we’re seeing the signs that vaccination is reducing the number of people coming in through the front door of the hospital and that’s another reason why we are able to bring the end of some of those restrictions forward,” he said.
Drakeford said that despite scientists downgrading the pandemic to endemic, he was still concerned about a third wave of infections.
“By its definition, we are no longer in a pandemic but I continue to sound a warning sign that this is not a one-way street,” he said.
“The fact things are getting better does not mean that it inevitably goes on getting better. We are working very hard to make sure that the current progress is not reversed in Wales.
“But there is no guarantee. An endemic disease is still a disease and it will still require action by governments, by the health service, and each one of us in our own lives to make sure that endemic condition doesn’t become one that loses lives and puts services at risk.”
Updated
R number in England rises slightly
England’s R number has risen slightly to between 0.8 and 1 as infection level falls across UK, according to latest figures released by by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
This suggests the pandemic is still continuing to shrink but at a slightly slower rate than last week.
Last week, the figure was estimated to be between 0.7 and 1.
For those who need a refresher on what the R number means, it is a measure of the average number of people one infected person will go on to infect.
If R is above 1, an outbreak can grow exponentially, but if it is below 1, the outbreak shrinks.
Updated
The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, was asked about the assertion that Britain had moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation.
He said:
By its definition we are no longer at this moment in a pandemic. I continue to sound a warning that this is not a one-way street. The fact that things are getting better means it will inevitably go on getting better. In recent weeks we’ve seen how fast things went from being in a good position to a very difficult position in France, Italy and Germany.
If coronavirus is an endemic condition like flu we may still need to see, for example, a vaccination programme in the autumn. An endemic disease is still a disease and will require action from the government, the health service and each one of us in our own lives. We’re going to be living with Covid for a very long time.
Drakeford said the modelling suggested there would be a third wave of the virus in Wales but he did not expect it to be of the same magnitude as the first two. He said he did not believe lockdowns would be needed and the impact on the NHS would be “manageable”.
The first minister said Wales has “the most successful vaccination programme in the UK” with more than 1.7 million adults aged 18 and over have had their first dose of the vaccine – more than two-thirds of the adult population.
Drakeford said the all-Wales figure was now 14.7 cases per 100,000 people – the lowest in the UK.
In England, the percentage of people testing positive for Covid-19 is estimated to have decreased in the North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands and London, the ONS said. The trend was uncertain for all other regions.
North-west England had the highest proportion of people of any region in England likely to test positive for coronavirus in the week to April 16: around one in 370.
South-west England had the lowest estimate: around one in 1,540.
Updated
Public Health Wales said a total of 1,742,273 first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have now been given in Wales.
The agency said 653,537 second doses have also been administered.
When modelling the level of infection among different age groups in England, the ONS said rates have decreased in most groups in the week to April 16 except secondary school children (school years 7 to 11), young adults (school years 12 to age 24) and people aged 25-34.
It said for these groups the trend is uncertain in the most recent week, but rates have “likely decreased” over the two weeks up to April 16, PA news reports.
Around one in 560 are estimated to have had Covid-19 in the week to April 16, which is down from one in 500 and the lowest since estimates began for Scotland in October.
In Northern Ireland, the estimate for those who have had Covid-19 in the week to April 16 is around one in 660 people, up from one in 710 in the previous week, with the estimated number of people testing positive rising from 2,600 to 2,800 week-on-week.
The ONS said that in Northern Ireland the percentage of people testing positive had decreased in the two weeks up to April 16, compared to the week ending April 3 when it was one in 300.
Updated
In Wales, around one in 840 people is estimated to have had Covid-19 in the week to April 16 - up from one in 920 in the previous week.
But the ONS said the percentage of people testing positive appeared to have been level, with an estimated 3,600 people in Wales having Covid-19 compared to 3,300 the previous week, PA news reports.
Infection levels in England continue to fall
Around one in 610 people in private households in England had Covid-19 in the week to April 16 - down from one in 480 the previous week, according to the latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS said an estimated 90,000 people within the community population in England had Covid-19.
This is the first time it has dropped below 100,000 since the week to September 10 2020, when the estimate stood at 59,800, the equivalent of around one in 900 people.
Updated
Two cases of human-to-cat transmission of Covid-19 have been identified by researchers. Scientists from the University of Glasgow found the cases of Sars-CoV-2 transmission as part of a screening programme of the feline population in the UK.
The cats, of different breeds, were living in separate households and displayed mild to severe respiratory signs. Researchers believe both pets were infected by their owners, who had Covid-19 symptoms before the cats became unwell, PA news reports.
The study, published in the Veterinary Record, says there is no evidence of cat-to-human transmission or that cats, dogs or other domestic animals play any appreciable role in the epidemiology of human Covid infections.
But the scientists said domestic animals could act as a “viral reservoir”, allowing continued transmission, and said it was important to improve understanding of whether pets can play a role in infecting humans.
Prof Margaret Hosie, from the MRC-University of Glasgow’s centre for virus research and lead author of the study, said:
These two cases of human-to-animal transmission, found in the feline population in the UK, demonstrate why it is important that we improve our understanding of animal Sars-CoV-2 infection.
Currently, animal-to-human transmission represents a relatively low risk to public health in areas where human-to-human transmission remains high. However, as human cases decrease, the prospect of transmission among animals becomes increasingly important as a potential source of Sars-CoV-2 reintroduction to humans.
It is therefore important to improve our understanding of whether exposed animals could play any role in transmission.
Read more here:
Has Britain moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation? The claim was made during a press conference on Thursday when scientists at Oxford University revealed an analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics.
Their work showed vaccines are driving down Covid in the UK, with two doses of the Pfizer jab slashing asymptomatic infections by 70% and symptomatic infections by 90%.
Sarah Walker, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Oxford and chief investigator on the ONS Covid-19 Infection Survey told reporters that vaccines were the only way we would have a chance of controlling the virus in the long term.
She added:
Without vaccines, I don’t think getting close to zero is really feasible in the situation now in the UK where we’re effectively endemic, we’ve moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation.
The latter phrase has caused some confusion. Walker told the Guardian:
Pandemic means something across the world, usually in the context of sweeping the world, and causing problems in lots of countries at the same time, so clearly I didn’t mean that this wasn’t still happening.
What I was trying to get across is the difference between an acute crisis and an ongoing underlying chronic problem. In infectious diseases, we talk about a disease becoming endemic, meaning it is always there and you just have to deal with it, like malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.
The benefits our data show in the general population mean that the vaccines give us the chance to control the virus more and move into a situation where Covid-19 is an endemic disease. It is an opportunity, but we can still squander it.
Walker went on to explain that because vaccines are not 100% effective they won’t drive cases down to zero, but they can reduce the disease to an endemic problem.
She said:
Every infection provides the opportunity for the virus to mutate into a new variant that the vaccines are less effective against, so it is on a knife edge,” she said. “We need as many people to get vaccinated and reduce the virus levels to as low as possible.
Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford said he hoped the coronavirus situation in India gave the UK government “real pause for thought” about reopening international travel on May 17.
Drakeford told the PA news agency:
We have cases of the Indian variant in Wales, as we’ve had cases of the South African variant.
The UK Government has a very important decision to make about May 17 and the reopening of international travel.
I really hope that what we’ve seen in India in the last week will give them real pause for thought, and that we don’t run the risk of opening up international travel too quickly on too broad a front, and that results in the virus coming back into Wales.
One shot of the Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reduces coronavirus infections by nearly two-thirds and protects older and more vulnerable people as much as younger, healthy individuals, a study has found.
The results from Oxford University and the Office for National Statistics are a welcome boost to the vaccination programme and the first to show the impact on new infections and immune responses in a large group of adults in the general population.
By driving down rates of infection the vaccines will not only prevent hospitalisations and deaths but help break chains of transmission and so reduce the risk of a damaging resurgence of disease as the UK reopens.
The researchers analysed Covid test results from more than 350,000 people in the UK between December and April. They found that 21 days after a first jab – the time it takes the immune system to mount a decent response – new Covid infections dropped by 65%.
Read more here:
The UK government was forced to borrow a peacetime record of £303bn to combat Covid-19 in the first full financial year of the crisis but the total was lower than originally feared, official figures have shown.
Despite a £28bn gap between state spending and tax receipts in March, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the deficit for the 2020-21 year was £24bn less than the £327bn pencilled in at the time of the budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
As a percentage of national output, borrowing in the year between April 2020 and March 2021 stood at 14.5% – the highest since the financial year ending in March 1946, a period that covered the final few months of the second world war.
Read the full story here:
Coronavirus vaccines "remain out of reach" in the poorest countries – WHO
In a report on Friday, marking the first anniversary of the COVAX dose-sharing facility, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has denounced “inequities” in vaccine distribution.
“Nearly 900 million vaccine doses have been administered globally, but over 81% have gone to high or upper middle-income countries, while low-income countries have received just 0.3%,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of WHO said.
Speaking about the ACT (Access to Covid-19 Tools) accelerator set up a year ago, Tedros has urged wealthier countries to share excess doses to help inoculate health workers in low-income countries.
“Low-income countries test less than 5% as much as high-income countries, and the majority of countries still have trouble accessing sufficient oxygen and dexamethasone,” Tedros said.
COVAX, which has shipped 40.5 million doses to 118 countries so far, aims to secure 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.
Britain’s consumers started to spend more freely even before lockdown restrictions were eased, according to official figures pointing to a spring bounceback in the economy.
The Office for National Statistics said that in March – a month in which there was only a modest relaxation of the curbs imposed across the UK to stop the spread of Covid-19 – retail sales rose by 5.4%.
The increase was well above the 1.5% predicted by City economists, with sales in March 1.6% higher than they were before the pandemic began to have an impact on the economy in February 2020.
Darren Morgan, the director of economic statistics development at the ONS, said retail sales had continued their recovery after a subdued start to the year. In the first quarter of 2021, with all but essential stores closed, sales were almost 6% lower than in the final three months of 2020
“Specialist food stores, such as bakers and butchers, saw increased sales as the continued closure of hospitality saw customers buying produce for Easter festivities at home,” Morgan said.
Read more here:
Stormont economy minister Diane Dodds has described the reopening of close contact services and outdoor attractions in Northern Ireland following lockdown as a “good day and an even better day for the economy”.
Dodds was speaking to media during a visit to the Natural Hair Company salon in Lisburn, Co Antrim, PA reports.
She said:
It’s the start of a road back to rebuilding and recovering our economy and a bit of normality.
It has been an absolutely torrid year, particularly for our retail, for these close contact services. The cycle of lockdowns has been really, really devastating.
We want to see the economy reopen safely, we want to see it reopen sustainably and we want to move forward.
Next week is another momentous week and we will reopen all of retail, reopen hospitality outdoors and reopen self-contained accommodation. It’s a really big step forward.
Mark Drakeford, the first minister in Wales, has denied that his decision to bring forward the easing of some restrictions in Wales by two weeks is to do with the forthcoming Senedd election.
The Welsh Labour leader said the changes are due to the creation of “extra headroom” in the public health situation amid criticism from opposition parties.
Indoor supervised activities for children, indoor organised activities for up to 15 adults such as exercise classes, and the reopening of community centres are being brought forward from May 17 to May 3, PA reports.
It means Wales will now complete its move to Alert Level 3 by May 3 – three days before the election – but the Welsh Conservatives and Plaid Cymru have accused Drakeford of using his powers as well as Welsh government press briefings to unfairly influence the forthcoming election.
Asked about the criticism by opposition parties, Drakeford told Sky News on Friday:
If I had to be announcing more difficult news today, opposition parties would be demanding that I was there making that announcement.
I make that announcement every three weeks. I’ve had to do it on some very difficult days when the news has not been good.
Today I have to return to the podium, as I have every three weeks, to let people in Wales know the assessment of the current state of the virus in Wales, the decisions we’re able to make on their behalf, our assessment of what can happen in the future, and to remind people in Wales that coronavirus is by no means over.
India on UK travel red list as Covid crisis grows
Passengers on flights into the UK from India must now enter hotel quarantine as the country is officially added to the UK’s coronavirus travel red list.
As of 4am on Friday, people returning from India must quarantine in a government-approved hotel for 10 days, while anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen will be banned from entering the country if they have been in India in the previous 10 days.
Four airlines asked for a total of eight extra flights to arrive at Heathrow before the 4am cut-off; however, it is understood that Heathrow declined the airlines’ requests to ensure existing pressures at the border were not exacerbated, PA reports.
The restrictions come in response to mounting concern about the number of Covid-19 cases in India and the emergence there of a variant of the virus.
On Thursday, India reported more than 314,000 new infections - the worst daily sum of the pandemic anywhere in the world.
The variant – also known as B.1.617 – was first noted internationally in October and first identified in the UK on February 22.
It has 13 mutations, including two in the virus’s spike protein, known as E494Q and L452R.
Public Health England (PHE) said on Thursday that 55 cases of the Indian variant were found in the UK in the week to April 14.
It remains unclear whether any of the mutations mean the variant can be transmitted more easily, is more deadly or can evade the effectiveness of vaccines or natural immunity, PHE experts said.
Boris Johnson was forced to cancel a trip to India on Monday as the country struggles to cope with a dramatic surge in cases.
People who arrived back in the UK from India before the red list change told the BBC they were “so relieved” and felt “very lucky”.
Updated
