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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

UK Covid: Hancock says 'we need to come down hard' on South African variant after 105 cases identified - as it happened

Health secretary Matt Hancock during a media briefing on coronavirus.
Health secretary Matt Hancock during a media briefing on coronavirus. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

Early evening summary

  • Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has confirmed that intensified testing is being deployed in eight postcode areas in England in a bid to stamp out the South African variant of coronavirus. He said 105 cases have been identified in the country, of which 11 have no link to international travel. These are particularly worrying because they suggest that this variant - which, like the Kent variant, seems more transmissible than the original - is now spreading generally through the community. Hancock said that “we need to come down on it hard”. He said there was no evidence that it was more deadly than the original version of coronavirus. But in practice a variant that spreads more easily does pose a greater threat, and, although the current vaccines that are available are effective against it, they do not seem to counter it quite as forcefully as they do the original version and the Kent variant now dominant in the UK. (See 3.25pm.) This is from my colleague Nicola Davis on the South African variant.
  • Hancock has said that more than half of people in their 70s have now been vaccinated. Speaking at the No 10 press conference he said in his opening statement:

I’m so proud of the team, who’ve now vaccinated 9.2 million people across the UK, that includes 931,204 vaccinations just this weekend.

And to put that into context – that’s one in every 60 adults in the whole United Kingdom vaccinated in one single weekend. It’s a mammoth effort ...

We’ve now vaccinated almost nine in 10 of all over 80s in the UK and now, as of today, we’ve vaccinated over half of all people in their 70s.

And, I’m delighted that I can tell you we’ve visited every eligible care home with older residents in England, and offered vaccinations to all their residents and staff.

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

Updated

This is from Alastair McLellan, editor of the Health Service Journal, commenting on a line used repeatedly at the Matt Hancock press conference, and on other occasions when ministers are challenged about the vaccine priority list.

The patient waiting area at the coronavirus mass vaccine centre at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre earlier today.
The patient waiting area at the coronavirus mass vaccine centre at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre earlier today. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

These are from John Roberts from the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group on the rate of vaccination. He says at the current rate of progress the government could ensure everyone in the first nine vaccine priority groups (all over-50s, health and social care workers and people with serious underlying health conditions) could get their first dose by 8 April.

Q: Is the South African variant more infectious or more serious?

Hopkins says it seems to be similar in transmissibility to the Kent variant that is currently dominant in the UK [which is up to 70% more transmissible than the original one.]

She says there is no evidence that it causes a more severe illness.

But it does have more mutations, she says. That might be why the vaccines are less effective against it, she says. And she says they want to stop it developing further mutations.

And that’s it. The press conference is over.

Hancock says regions of England such as the north-west and Birmingham are getting their “fair share” of the vaccine. He says he wants to put to bed the myth that regions are not getting their fair share. But the supply is bumpy, he says. He says that is why the vaccination rates vary.

We’re making sure that the vaccine goes to all parts of ... the whole country including all of the devolved areas and making sure that happens on a fair basis according to need.

Updated

Hopkins says the new South African cases do not appear to be linked. She says people may have caught the virus from people coming to the UK from abroad with asymptomatic coronavirus.

Q: Why are we not isolating the places were the South African variant has been found? And are tighter restrictions going to be imposed there?

Hancock says a national lockdown is already in place. “Very strong” laws are in place. And travel is not allowed unless it is essential. People in these areas should stay at home, and let them get this variant under control.

Q: Have any of you had the jab yet?

Hancock says he has not had it yet, but he will get it as soon as he can.

Powis and Hopkins both say they have not been vaccinated yet because they have not been doing frontline work. But Powis says if he starts giving the vaccine, he may get vaccinated.

Q: What assurances can you give that unpaid carers will always be a priority?

Hancock says knows from his own family how important unpaid carers are. He says they are at the heart of his thinking about policy.

Q: Often people being vaccinated are accompanied by an unpaid carer who does not get vaccinated. Shouldn’t they be vaccinated at the same time?

Powis says the NHS values unpaid carers. He repeats the point about the JCVI setting the priority groups. As soon as the top four groups have been done, in two weeks’ time, the service will move on to other priority groups rapidly.

Updated

Q: Will you be able to stop community transmission of the South African variant? It seems to be spreading.

Hancock says overall cases are coming down. He says he hopes extra testing and contact tracing can stop the spread of the South African variant.

Contact tracing now finds 95% of contacts, he says.

And in these cases people will be going door to door to search out contacts, he says.

Q: What assurances can you give people in priority groups who are housebound that they will be contacted?

Powis says GPs are working hard to undertake visits to these people. “We will get to them,” he says. He says he is confident the government will reach the people in the top priority groups.

Q: How confident are you that the existing vaccines are effective against the South African variant?

Hopkins says all the vaccines used to date in trials have been effective against the South African variant. She says she expects other vaccines to have a similar level of effectiveness.

Hancock is now taking questions.

Q: Some GP surgeries are struggling to complete the first phase of the vaccine rollout by mid-February. And why are unpaid carers in group six, when they often do more face-to-face work than NHS staff in a higher priority group?

Hancock says GPs are not the only people offering vaccines. Mass vaccination centres and hospitals are also playing a part.

The rollout is happening on a mass scale, he says.

As for the priority list, he invites Prof Powis to comment. But he says the categories were determined by a clinical judgment.

Powis says the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation came up with the priority list.

Updated

Hancock says enhanced testing is now being carried out in the eight postcode areas where there have been cases of the South African variant not linked to travel. They are: W7, N17 and CR4 in London, WS2 in Walsall, ME15 in Kent, EN10 in Hertfordshire, GU21 in Surrey and PR9 in Lancashire.

Hancock says 105 cases of the South African variant have been identified in the UK. He says 11 of them appear to have no connection to travel.

There’s currently no evidence to suggest this variant is any more severe. But we need to come down on it hard, and we will.

Updated

Hancock says another 40 million doses of the Valneva vaccine have been ordered by the UK.

Updated

Hancock says over half of all people in their 70s now vaccinated

Hancock starts by saying he has “quite a lot of news” to tell us.

He says 9.2 million people across the UK have now been vaccinated.

This weekend the equivalent of one in every 60 people in the UK was vaccinated, he says.

He says almost nine in 10 of all over-80s have been vaccinated, and over half of all people in their 70s have been vaccinated.

And all eligible care home residents and staff in England have been offered vaccines, he says.

Updated

Matt Hancock's press conference

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is about to start his press conference.

He will be joined by Prof Stephen Powis, the national medical director at NHS England, and Dr Susan Hopkins from Public Health England.

Commenting on the discovery of a local case of the South African variant in Walsall (see 4.57pm), Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, told a West Midlands combined authority webinar meeting:

The thing I want to stress, and I may be slightly better briefed than others here, is there is a single case.

Because of ... the need to bear down on this, what is going to happen - and literally it’s just being set up now - is testing in the immediate vicinity of where that single person lives.

We hope that this has been caught very, very early and that testing can eliminate it.

Walsall council has unveiled plans to test an extra 10,000 residents with no Covid-19 symptoms in response to the discovery of a local case of the South African variant, PA Media reports. Walsall’s director of public health, Stephen Gunther, said:

There is currently no evidence that this variant causes more severe illness, or that the regulated vaccines would not protect against it, but research indicates that it does transmit from person to person more easily.

Updated

In Wales there have been 21 further coronavirus deaths and 630 further cases, Public Health Wales has recorded.

A week ago today the equivalent figures were 23 deaths and 872 cases.

Nicola Sturgeon has urged Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, to stop other UK ministers disclosing vaccine dose figures as the dispute over Scotland’s slower overall rate of Covid vaccinations intensified.

The Scottish first minister said she had complained to Gove in a conference call with other UK and devolved government leaders, the so-called four nations, on Saturday, implying her government was being deliberately undermined by the UK government.

Sturgeon is under growing pressure to explain why Scotland’s rollout of the vaccines has been slower than in the rest of the UK. While older Scottish care home residents have been vaccinated faster in Scotland, overall the Scottish vaccinations rate has been the most sluggish.

In England, Sir Simon Stevens, the NHS chief executive, has said 75% of all 75 to 79-year olds have had their first dose; in Scotland, it is 14% for those living in the community. Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, speculated on Sunday the Scottish government had access to about 1.15m doses yet Monday’s Scottish data showed nearly 560,000 people have had their first dose.

Sturgeon admitted during today’s regular coronavirus briefing she was concerned that Sunday’s total vaccinations figure was very low, at 9,628, and had asked her officials to establish why it had plunged. In Wales, a country with 2m fewer people, the figure was 12,898 and in England, nearly 290,000.

Sturgeon claimed the UK was being inconsistent: it had been horrified that Jeane Freeman, the Scottish health minister, had published data on expected deliveries of vaccine doses last month, yet was leaking data on vaccines available to her government.

Despite Sturgeon’s complaint, those data are different: the UK government said figures on future deliveries was commercially sensitive - a fact highlighted by the furious row between the EU and AstraZeneca last week, while data on doses already made available was safe to release.

Willie Rennie, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, said:

[The] first minister is in denial if she thinks the public are going to be taken in by this charade. We are seeing deadlines for vaccination invites whizz past and tens of thousands of doses apparently sitting unused. The public deserves to know why.

Updated

Daily recorded UK Covid cases and deaths at lowest level for six weeks

The UK government has just updated its daily dashboard. Here are the key figures.

  • The UK has recorded 18,607 further coronavirus cases – the lowest daily total for almost seven weeks. Daily new cases have not been this low since 15 December, when 18,450 were recorded. The number of new cases overall in the last seven days is now almost 30% lower than it was in the previous week – even though the number of tests being carried out has been rising.
New cases
New cases. Photograph: Gov.UK
  • The UK has recorded 406 further deaths – the lowest daily total for six weeks. The recorded death figures are always lower than the weekly average on a Monday, but they have not been lower than this since Monday 28 December, when 357 deaths were recorded. The seven-day average for deaths is still 1,148, but this is 7.4% lower than it was in the previous week.
Dashboard figures
Dashboard figures. Photograph: Gov.UK
  • The number of patients in hosptial in the UK with Covid was 34,783 on Thursday last week, the last day for which figures are available on the dashboard. That was the first time it was below 35,000 for more than three weeks.
  • Yesterday 319,038 people in the UK received their first dose of a vaccine.
Daily figures for people getting first dose of a vaccine
Daily figures for people getting first dose of a vaccine. Photograph: Gov.UK

Updated

Sir Keir Starmer has renewed calls for the government to start vaccinating teachers and school staff during the February half term. Speaking during a visit to south London, he defended the proposal, which has been criticised for contradicting the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advice about what policy will save most lives. He said:

The reason for that is not because teachers and school staff are more at risk. It is because of the disruption that will be caused to schools if they are not vaccinated.

What we saw in the autumn was schools being open but actually being highly disrupted because children are in one week and out the next week.

That cannot be our ambition for 8 March. So this is to make the get-back-to-school real and workable.

Keir Starmer visiting Albert House in Woolwich, south London, today.
Keir Starmer visiting Albert House in Woolwich, south London, today. Photograph: Ian Vogler/AFP/Getty Images

Scotland has recorded 848 further coronavirus cases, although this figure is artificially low because results are missing from one laboratory. And, according to today’s figures, 9.5% of the new tests had a positive result.

There have been six further deaths. This figure is always low on Monday because registration offices are closed at the weekend.

And there are 1,958 patients with coronavirus in hospital in Scotland. That is 17 more than the total for yesterday, but still well below the total for last week (2,016).

Updated

Joanna Cherry sacked from SNP frontbench at Westminster

One of Nicola Sturgeon’s fiercest internal critics, the lawyer Joanna Cherry QC, has been sacked from the Scottish National party’s frontbench at Westminster after a public feud with her deputy leader last week.

Cherry announced on Twitter she had been sacked as shadow home secretary, in a reshuffle of the SNP’s Commons frontbench, and immediately hit out at her Westminster colleagues and party leadership over its strategy on independence.

After implying she would continue criticising party leaders from her new seat on the party’s ruling national executive, Cherry said: “Westminster is increasingly irrelevant to Scotland’s constitutional future and @theSNP would do well to radically re-think our strategy.”

Cherry was a very prominent figure in the court battles in 2019 against the UK government’s Brexit policies, and particularly its failure to consult MPs, joining in the cross-party legal challenges orchestrated by Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project.

A supporter of so-called gender critical campaigners, Cherry clashed last week with Kirsty Blackman, the SNP’s former deputy leader at Westminster, over the SNP’s policies on trans rights, in what many observers believe is a proxy war between supporters of Alex Salmond and Sturgeon loyalists.

That conflict, which includes Sturgeon’s cautious strategy for organising a second independence referendum, has risen with intensity following Salmond’s allegations that officials close to Sturgeon tried to orchestrate government and police investigations into sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Last Thursday night, Sturgeon broadcast a video on Twitter as SNP leader insisting transphobia had no place in her party, after a series of resignations from younger party members critical of the perception the Scottish government has been diluting pro-trans measures in recent legislation.

Updated

Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One that the vaccines being deployed in the UK were effective against the South African variant, although perhaps less effective than they were against the original version. He said:

It may be the case that they are just slightly less efficient than they are against the original Wuhan virus, but doesn’t mean that they are not useful. These vaccines are much more effective than we dared hope in the first place so some reduction in their efficiency is not a disaster. It is just making life more difficult.

But he said it was worth making a “real effort” to eliminate the South African variant in the UK.

A real effort needs to be made to make a circle around it and then eliminate it, if that can be achieved. I think that’s a maybe but it is definitely worth a try.

Finn also said there were “encouraging early signs” that the rollout of the vaccination programme was having an impact on infection rates among the over-80s.

Updated

Johnson hints Covid restrictions in England will be eased on nationwide basis, not regionally

Boris Johnson gave a TV interview on a visit to a vaccination centre in Batley, west Yorkshire, and I covered the highlights at 12.59pm. In further interviews on the visit, he covered more ground. Here are the key lines, taken from PA media.

  • Johnson hinted that Covid restrictions will be eased in England on a nationwide basis, not regionally. He said he had not yet decided whether there would be a return to the tiering system after lockdown ends (which involved restrictions varying regionally, according to the local Covid situation), but he implied that a nationwide approach might be better. He said:

It may be that a national approach, going down the tiers in a national way, might be better this time round, given that the disease is behaving much more nationally.

If you look at the way the new variant has taken off across the country, it’s a pretty national phenomenon.

The charts I see, we’re all sort of moving pretty much in the same sort of way, I mean there are a few discrepancies, a few differences, so it may be that we will go for a national approach but there may be an advantage still in some regional differentiation as well. I’m keeping an open mind on that.

Until recently ministers have backed a regional approach to easing lockdown restrictions. On 6 January, when MPs voted to approve the lockdown, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, told them that although the regulations allowed the lockdown to remain in place until the end of March, “it is not because we expect the full national lockdown to continue until then but to allow the steady, controlled and evidence-led move down through the tiers on a local basis”.

  • Johnson accepted that there had been an “issue” with some care home staff refusing the vaccine, but he said that take-up was now improving. He said:

We’re now seeing a big increase in uptake in care home staff and that’s a great thing to see, and I’ve seen in the last few weeks a big increase in the receptivity of care home staff to the vaccinations.

  • He praised the Al-Hikmah Centre that he was visiting for the work it was doing in ensuring there is high take-up of the vaccine among the local Indian Muslim community. He said:

I’m seeing a very impressive take-up rate among the Muslim community here, the Indian Muslim community, and that is fantastic to see and I thank them for the work that they’re doing to dispel some of the nonsense about vaccines. I think it’s about spreading a sense of positivity about the vaccine, I think that’s what we want to see and I think that’s working.

Boris Johnson at the Al-Hikmah vaccination centre in Batley.
Boris Johnson at the Al-Hikmah vaccination centre in Batley. Photograph: Jon Super/AFP/Getty Images

Here are some of the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.

  • Government figures will be published later today confirming that almost all care home residents in England have been offered the first dose of a virus, the PM’s spokesman said. Although the care minister Helen Whately would not confirm that all staff had been offered the vaccine in an interview this morning (see 9.21am), the spokesman said the figures were expected to show “that we have offered the vaccine to residents and staff at every eligible care home with older residents across England”. He said a “small number of care homes” had not been included because they had Covid outbreaks that made visits impossible. “But those care homes will be visited and jabbed as soon as NHS staff are able to go into those homes and do so,” the spokesman said.
  • The spokesman said AstraZeneca had committed to deliver two million doses of its vaccine a week to the UK.
  • He said it was too soon to say when “surplus” vaccine doses could be donated to other counties, such as EU member states.

Welsh government to prioritise younger children for school reopening, says minister

Parents and children in Wales may know by the end of the week whether schools in Wales will be reopening after half-term, the Welsh government minister Eluned Morgan has indicated. She told a briefing:

We’re expecting an announcement on that on Friday but of course that will be determined by those negotiations [with teaching unions] that will be held this week.

The focus will absolutely be on those children who are youngest, who find it most difficult to learn online and need that socialisation perhaps more than some of the older children.

We are very determined to try and get those foundation-phase children back to school as soon as possible.

Updated

A total of 8,543,262 Covid vaccinations had taken place in England between 8 December and 31 January, according to provisional NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 292,116 on the previous day’s figures.

As PA Media reports, of this number, 8,082,355 were the first dose of the vaccine, a rise of 289,359 on the previous day’s figures, while 460,907 were the second dose, an increase of 2,757.

Updated

11 cases of South African variant found in England with no links to travel

Public Health England has identified 11 cases of the South African variant across England with no links to travel, it has emerged.

Updated

NHS England has recorded 356 further coronavirus hospital deaths. The details are here.

A week ago today the equivalent figure was 609.

South African variant of Covid found in eight areas of England

The South African variant of coronavirus has been discovered in eight different areas of England, sparking a “a two-week sprint to test everyone” in the affected postcodes, the Guardian has learned. My colleague Robert Booth has the story here.

Labour says spread of South African variant highlights need for tougher border policy

This is from Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary.

This evening, at 10pm, MPs will vote on a Labour motion calling for all arrivals to the UK to be subject to hotel quarantine. The government has not tabled an amendment to the bill, and it is expected that Conservative MPs will abstain. That means the motion should pass. But it is not binding on the government because it is not legislation.

In the past governments did used to treat opposition day motions as significant, and they would vote against them if they disagreed. But this year Boris Johnson’s government has been treating the votes as irrelevant and ordering its MPs to abstain, following a precedent set by Theresa May when her government did not have a majority.

Here is the Labour motion in full.

That this house calls on the government to immediately introduce a comprehensive hotel quarantine system for all arrivals into the UK, thereby securing the country against the import of new strains and maximising the effectiveness of the country’s vaccination programme; to publish the scientific evidence which informed the government’s decision not to introduce a comprehensive hotel quarantine regime to flights from all countries; and to announce a sector support package for aviation focused on employment and environmental improvements.

Updated

Kent joins Surrey and Ealing as places where local testing intensified amid concern over South African variant

According to PA Media, door-to-door coronavirus testing in part of Kent will begin on Tuesday morning amid concerns that the South African coronavirus variant may also be spreading through the community there. There are similar concerns in Surrey and Ealing. (See 12.16pm and 1.25pm.) There PA report goes on:

Kent county council said the government has asked for as many people as possible in the ME15 postcode area to be tested following information that the variant may have been identified in the area in a resident who has no links to travel or other variant cases.

Households within the ME15 area will be visited by staff from Kent police, Maidstone borough council, Kent fire and rescue and other support agencies, who will knock on their door and ask everyone aged 16 and over to carry out a PCR test there and then.

The test will then be picked up by the same team and sent for laboratory testing within a short time of the initial visit.

Residents should take the test whether they have Covid-19 symptoms or not, the council said.

Updated

Every elderly care home resident in Wales has been offered a Covid-19 vaccination, the Welsh government has announced. Eluned Morgan, minister for mental health, wellbeing and Welsh language, told reporters at the Welsh government’s briefing:

All older person care homes have either received visits from vaccination teams or visits are planned. Where visits have not taken place yet, it is because there have been live Covid cases in the last 20 days. The vaccination teams will visit these homes as soon as the public health advice allows.

I want to thank everyone who is working so hard to provide vaccines to everyone who needs them. Every vaccine delivered is a small victory against the virus.

As PA Media reports, Public Health Wales said 74.5% of those over 80 have received their first dose, along with 75.1% of care home residents and 79.1% of care home staff.

Updated

James Brokenshire, the security minister, has been discharged from hospital following surgery to remove his “somewhat troublesome” right lung. Last month he took leave from his work after the recurrence of a tumour for which he originally had an operation in 2018. He says he is staying “positive and upbeat”.

South African variant found in possible community transmission case from December, London council reveals

Surrey is not the only place where someone has had the South African variant of coronavirus without being linked to someone who has arrived in the UK from the country. (See 12.16pm.) In Ealing, in west London, some residents are also being encouraged to get a test after the South African variant was identified in a possible community transmission case.

The person who tested positive for the South African strain was actually tested in December, the council said. This suggests that it was spreading within the community some weeks ago. (It can take a while for the new variant to be identified because, although test results can be turned around within 24 hours, the genomic sequencing which determines which variant of the virus has been found is more complicated and takes longer.)

In a new release today the council said:

Ealing council is asking residents living and working in parts of Hanwell and West Ealing to get a Covid-19 test, whether they have symptoms or not, after a local resident tested positive for the South African strain of the virus.

The individual is understood to have been tested for the virus at the end of December despite not having travelled to South Africa or been in contact with anyone else who had. The person, who is not being identified, is being praised for following all public health guidance and self-isolating. They have now made a full recovery.

Julian Bell, leader of Ealing council, said:

I know people will be concerned to hear that a member of our community had the South African strain of the virus last month. I am very pleased that they have made a full recovery and want to thank them for staying at home during the self-isolation period which should have helped to lessen the spread.

I urge people living or working in the area with or without symptoms to get tested so that any others with this variant can be identified to protect them, their loved ones and the wider community.

The government has told us that there is currently no evidence that this variant causes more severe illness or that the regulated vaccine would not protect against it.

Other than getting tested or other essential reasons, all residents are urged to follow the lockdown rules and stay home, wash your hands regularly, keep your distance from others and wear a face covering.

Updated

Johnson suggests he is more worried about impact of Covid on education than on economy

Boris Johnson has recorded an interview with broadcasters at the Al-Hikmah vaccination centre in Batley. Here are the main points he made.

  • Johnson said the UK would be “living with Covid for a while to come”. He said:

The fact is we are going to be living with Covid for a while to come in one way or another, I don’t think it will be as bad as the last 12 months - or anything like - of course, but it’s very, very important that our vaccines continue to develop and to adapt, and they will.

  • He said that, although there were signs that the Covid infections and hospital cases were falling, it was too soon to lift restrictions. He said:

We are starting to see some signs of a flattening and maybe even a falling off of infection rates and hospitalisations.

But don’t forget that they are still at a very high level by comparison with most points in the last 12 months, a really very high level.

So the risk is if you take your foot off the throat of the beast, as it were, and you allow things to get out of control again then you could, alas, see the disease spreading again fast before we have got enough vaccines into people’s arms. That’s the risk.

  • But he said he was “optimistic” people would be able to enjoy a summer holiday. He said:

I don’t want to give too much concrete by way of dates for our summer holidays. I am optimistic - I understand the reasons for being optimistic - but some things have got to go right.

  • He suggested that he was more worried about the impact of the pandemic on education than its impact on the economy. He said:

It is going to take a while for our country to bounce back completely from Covid. The economy, I think, can bounce back very, very strongly - the UK has immense natural resilience.

The thing that really concerns me at the moment is education and the deficit in our children’s education that we have run up as a result of these lockdowns.

That for me is one of the major, major priorities for us - making sure that we ameliorate and repair the loss of time in the classroom, the loss of educational opportunities.

  • He said that “virtually all” elderly care home residents had received their first coronavirus vaccine or been given an appointment for it.
  • He said he was “confident” that the government had the vaccine supplies it needed to ensure everyone got their second dose of vaccine within 12 weeks of their first one (the new timetable for a second jab set by the government).
  • He said he was confident that the vaccines being used by the UK offered “a high degree of immunity and protection against all variants”.
  • He said he spoke to the family of Captain Sir Tom Moore last night after it was revealed Moore is in hospital with coronavirus. Moore had been “an inspiration to everybody in this country”, Johnson said. “Our thoughts and our prayers are now with him and his family.”
Boris Johnson on Sky News this morning.
Boris Johnson on Sky News this morning. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Scottish Tory leader suggests Holyrood elections should be postponed

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, has suggested the May elections should be postponed for public health reasons, because the Covid pandemic and incomplete vaccination programme could make staging it unsafe.

After calling on Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, to withdraw her plans for a second independence referendum due to the pandemic, Ross was asked during a briefing with reporters whether he believed the election should go ahead. He replied:

I’ve said I don’t think now is the right time for politics and that means the next period, when parties would be going into campaigning, makes it really difficult. We will be in a different place in May but not in the months running up to May.

However, we have got to prepare, which is why the Scottish Conservatives [as a] party, we’re ready for an election in May. But will obviously have to take clear guidance and public health advice on whether it can safely go ahead.

Until now Scottish opposition leaders have been cautious about urging a delay, although a number of Labour figures, including the outgoing MSP Neil Findlay and the former first minister Henry McLeish, have said it ought to be postponed.

Election officials argue it can be safely held, alongside a significant increase in postal voting and rigorous hygiene rules at polling places. The Scottish authorities are planning for upwards of 40% of the electorate using postal votes; Holyrood passed legislation late last year allowing voting to take place over two days, for a longer count process and, in extremis, for the election to be delayed.

The highly infectious variants of Covid-19 have increased fears it will reduce turnout, particularly in areas with higher infection rates, and prevent opposition parties from campaigning door to door. That would give the Scottish National party a clear advantage, since running the Scottish government gives it a significant platform.

Ross was asked whether an election turnout of under 50% (it was 55.6% in 2016) would dilute Sturgeon’s claims to have a mandate for a referendum, and he said that could be the case. He said:

Not enough has been done to engage people in the election; I think there’s very limited bandwidth out there to be thinking about politics and an election in May.

Douglas Ross.
Douglas Ross. Photograph: Russell Cheyne/Reuters

Updated

Boris Johnson speaking to members of staff during a visit to the Al Hikmah vaccination centre in Batley, West Yorkshire, this morning
Boris Johnson speaking to members of staff during a visit to the Al Hikmah vaccination centre in Batley, West Yorkshire, this morning. Photograph: Jon Super/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

This is from ITV’s Robert Peston on the South African variant. (See 12.16m.)

This is from the BBC’s Iain Watson.

And this is from the BBC’s medical editor, Fergus Walsh.

South African variant cases found in Surrey prompt fears it is spreading via community transmission

Residents in parts of Surrey will be offered Covid tests after two people with no travel links were found to have caught the variant discovered in South Africa, Sky News’s Aubrey Allegretti reports.

Eight days ago Matt Hancock, the health secretary, told the BBC that at that point 77 cases of the South African variant had been found in the UK. All those cases were linked to travellers arriving in the UK, he said. The new cases are worrying because they are not linked to new arrivals, suggesting the variant is spreading via community transmission.

Updated

Downing Street has confirmed that Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will hold a press conference this afternoon.

And Boris Johnson has been visiting the Al Hikmah vaccination centre in Batley, West Yorkshire, this morning “where he met local faith leaders to discuss the work that they are doing to promote the vaccine uptake”, No 10 says. Doubtless we’ll hear what he had to say to broadcasters during the visit soon.

Boris Johnson visiting a vaccination centre in Batley this morning.
Boris Johnson visiting a vaccination centre in Batley this morning. Photograph: Jon Super/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Although ministers often said 31 January was their deadline for offering care home residents in England their first dose of vaccine, the Health Service Journal reported last week that 24 January was set as an earlier deadline, and that it was missed. HSJ reported:

The NHS has missed its first deadline for giving an initial dose of vaccine to all older people’s care home residents and staff, and is now working to do so by the end of the month.

An NHS England letter on 13 January said it was “expecting all [primary care] local vaccination services to administer the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to care home residents and staff … by the end of this week wherever possible and, at the latest, by the end of next week (Sunday 24th January).”

The letter set an additional financial payment to primary care networks for care home vaccinations by 24 January, and a smaller payment for those completed by 31 January.

I am grateful to usf1968 in the comments for flagging this up.

Updated

Central London is well placed to recover from the pandemic in the long term, according to an interim report into the future of the capital’s “central activities zone” (CAZ) published by the mayor, Sadiq Khan, today.

The report, by consultants from Arup, Gerald Eve and the London School of Economics, says that eventually people will want to return to commuting into central London for work. It says:

The impact of Covid-19 is severe, and is a threat not only to health and to the economy, but to the longer term survival of the CAZ. The pandemic period, and the aftermath, means that London, and Londoners, are suffering badly. Significant job losses have already taken place, and there are more to come in 2021 and 2022.

But beyond that, we suggest that the overall outlook is cautiously positive. Short term (the next two years) there may be an initial inertia and reluctance to commute back to the CAZ (for those who work in sectors or with employers where they have the choice to work from home) and, a possible rise in the popularity of satellite hubs. Beyond this time horizon, indications are that the appetite for the CAZ as a location could actually be strengthened over time.

It also says employers may have to make offices more enticing to lure workers back. It says:

Early signs are for a ‘flight to quality’ in office space as employers seek to entice workers to return. As such, a return to the office for a sustained period of 3-4 days per week is feasible. In this lower attendance situation, the negative impact on the wider arts and culture, retail and hospitality economy of the CAZ may be mitigated through a broader range of less frequent visitors, who choose to save their retail and leisure spend for the days that they are in town. London may move away from being a market, which you come into for shopping, to being a playground.

The full report is here (pdf).

Khan says that for London to recover, further government support is needed.

Updated

Vic Rayner, the executive director of the National Care Forum, which represents not-for-profit care home providers, told Sky News this morning that just 27% of its member organisations had 70% or more of their staff vaccinated as of early last week, adding that access to doses was the main issue. She said:

The priority over the next two weeks is to get the vaccine out to 1.6 million people who work across care. So it is a big, big task and a big clock is ticking away around that.

Scotland has entered the second phase of its plan to give the population a vaccine to combat coronavirus, with two new mass vaccination centres opening today. As PA Media reports, the facilities at Aberdeen’s P&J Live venue and the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) will be able to inoculate an extra 27,000 people per week. The EICC will have capacity to vaccinate more than 21,000 people a week at 45 stations, while the Aberdeen site will start with 20 booths to accommodate around 6,000 people weekly.

The waiting area as it was last week at the mass Covid vaccination centre at the P&J Live arena in Aberdeen, ahead of its opening today
The waiting area as it was last week at the mass Covid vaccination centre at the P&J Live arena in Aberdeen, ahead of its opening today. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

Updated

Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister and the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland, has said she is self-isolating because someone at home has tested positive.

Updated

Anthony Harnden, a professor of primary care at Oxford University and deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, has said Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was wrong to question the effectiveness of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on over-65s. Harnden told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

In my view the politicians need to understand the science before they make utterances like that ...

This vaccine, from the data, is very very effective against hospitalisations and deaths and nearly 100% effective actually.

It is a really good safe vaccine and any older person that has received it should have absolute confidence that it is a good vaccine.

Updated

Nadra Ahmed, executive chairman of the National Care Association, told BBC Breakfast this morning that some care home staff were refusing the Covid-19 vaccine due to “cultural issues”. Commenting on why some care home staff have not yet been vaccinated, Ahmed told BBC Breakfast:

Some of it is to do with access and that is that people are just not able to get to where they needed to go to.

If they’ve been coming into the care homes, the GPs have not had enough vaccine for the staff as well, they’ve just got enough for the residents, which is the priority.

And some of it is to do with cultural issues and some is that people just don’t want to have the vaccine.

We have to convince people that this vaccine is for them. That it’s for the staff to protect them and therefore protect the services they work in.

But Helen Whately, the care home minister, played down the idea that care home staff were refusing the vaccine. Asked about these reports, she told BBC Breakfast:

We know that there were some staff that were worried about the idea of having the vaccination.

But what I am hearing is that when the vaccination teams go into the care homes staff are coming forward. Some might be nervous but when they see their colleagues getting the vaccination, when they see that it’s all right ... we really are seeing good take-up from care home workers.

Helen Whately on Good Morning Britain on Monday
Helen Whately on Good Morning Britain on Monday. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

Liz Kendall, the shadow care minister, is calling on the government to clarify exactly how many staff in care homes in England have been vaccinated. This morning Helen Whately, the care minister, conceded that some staff were still waiting for jabs. (See 9.21am.)

Updated

Government orders 40m more doses of Scottish-made Valneva vaccine

The government has ordered an extra 40m doses of the Valneva Covid-19 vaccine which is being manufactured in Scotland. Here is the government’s news release. And here is the story from PA Media.

The move means 100m doses of Valneva have now been put on order, enough for every adult in the UK, with the latest batch earmarked for delivery in 2022.

The government has also retained options over a further 90m doses for supply between 2023 and 2025.

Valneva said the total value of the entire order was up to €1.4bn (£1.24 bn).

The vaccine is still in clinical trials, with the early-stage phase 1/2 study expected to read out within the next three months.

The jab is expected to be given as two doses and is being made at a site in West Lothian, with the government saying the new deal “will bolster long-term vaccine production in Scotland”.

If it is approved, 60m doses could start to be delivered to the UK by the second half of 2021.

In a statement on the announcement Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said:

The Valneva vaccine showcases the best of Scottish expertise right at the heart of our UK vaccine endeavour, demonstrating the strength of our union and what the UK can achieve when it works together.

If the vaccine is authorised by the health regulator, it will be rolled out across the four nations as quickly as possible.

Hancock’s comment is the latest evidence of the UK government using the vaccine programme to make the case for the union, in a bid to counter the growing support in Scotland for independence. Boris Johnson was doing this last week on his visit to Scotland, and Hancock himself has also started using this messaging at the No 10 briefings.

Updated

Minister says some staff still waiting for vaccine as care home residents in England get first jab

Good morning. Many aspects of the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis have been flawed, but generally the vaccination programme has so far been a remarkable success and so it is understandable why ministers are keen to talk about that. Today the government says it has effectively hit its target of offering all care home residents in England a jab (some have been missed because visits were cancelled due to Covid outbreaks in the homes) and this morning Helen Whately, the care minister, has been giving interviews about that.

But she has refused to confirm that all care home staff have been offered a vaccine. “We know that we are still working through the care home staff,” she told the Today programme. It had been assumed that staff were also covered by the end of January deadline, although Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock have both made comments (eg, here and here) saying the January promise just applied to residents.

Whately also seemed to water down the commitment to opening a centre offering vaccines 24/7. In early January No 10 caused a stir by claiming there was “not a clamour” for these. Boris Johnson subsequently announced the government would pilot the idea (after Sir Keir Starmer backed 24/7 vaccinations) and Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, said a pilot would “absolutely” be launched in London by the end of January. Today, though, when asked what had happened to this proposal, Whately just said it was “something that was being looked into”.

Here is the agenda for the day.

12pm: Downing Street is expected to hold its daily lobby briefing.

12.15pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is holding a coronavirus briefing.

12.15pm: The Welsh government is expected to hold a coronavirus briefing.

1.30pm: Sir Keir Starmer appears on Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch.

After 3.30pm: MPs begin an opposition day debate on a Labour motion calling for work on the removal of dangerous cladding from flats to start immediately.

4pm: Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, gives evidence to the Commons procedure committee, about Commons procedure during the pandemic.

5pm: Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is expected to hold a press conference at No 10.

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

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