Early evening summary
- A national booking service for vaccine appointments in England will be launched to help hit ambitious targets, Boris Johnson has said, as he pledged to immunise every elderly care home resident by the end of the month. As Jessica Elgot and Heather Stewart report, the prime minister said everyone would be able to get a vaccination within 10 miles of their home and that GP-led vaccine sites providing jabs would increase to more than 1,000 by the end of next week, and hospital sites to 223, delivering hundreds of thousands of vaccines a day by 15 January.
- Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, has said the health service is facing an “incredibly serious situation”. Speaking at a No 10 press conference alongside the PM, Stevens said there were 50% more Covid patients in hospital now than at the peak of the first wave. And numbers were “accelerating very, very rapidly,” he said. He went on:
We’ve seen an increase of 10,000 hospitalised coronavirus patients, just since Christmas Day. That’s the equivalent of filling 20 acute hospitals with extra coronavirus patients ... And that is, of course, all happening at what is traditionally the busiest time of year for hospitals and the wider NHS.
- The UK has recorded 1,162 further coronavirus deaths - the second highest daily total on this measure. (See 4.51pm.)
- Boris Johnson has said Donald Trump was “completely wrong” to cast doubt on the result of the US presidential election and encourage his supporters to storm the Capitol. In his most critical comments as PM about Trump, a pro-Brexit ally who once boasted about Johnson being a British version of himself, Johnson said:
Insofar as he encouraged people to storm the Capitol and insofar as the president consistently has cast doubt on the outcome of a free and fair election I believe that that was completely wrong.
I think what President Trump has been saying about that has been completely wrong.
I unreservedly condemn encouraging people to behave in the disgraceful way that they did in the Capitol.
And all I can say is I’m very pleased that the president-elect has now been duly confirmed in office and that democracy has prevailed.
That’s all from me for today. But our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog. It’s here.
UK extends scope of South African Covid travel ban
The UK ban on entry for travellers from South Africa is to be extended to include a swathe of southern African countries, in an attempt to stop the further spread of the highly transmissible variant of Covid-19 that emerged there.
From 4am Saturday, entry will be forbidden for most people who have travelled from or through any southern African country in the last 10 days - including Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and holiday destinations Seychelles and Mauritius.
British and Irish nationals can return but must self-isolate with their households for 10 days. The measures will be in place for at least two weeks while the scientific data is reviewed, the Department for Transport said.
Israel has meanwhile also been removed from the UK travel corridor list (granting travellers an exemption from quarantine) after a spike in cases there.
The government has yet to announce expected further measures for all arrivals at the UK border, such as producing a negative Covid test from within the past 72 hours. London mayor Sadiq Khan today called on the DfT to urgently introduce such measures in line with other countries which have managed to restrict transmission.
Covid hospital numbers in east of England and south-east more than double first wave peak, figures show
At this evening’s Number 10 briefing the head of NHS England, Sir Simon Stevens, said hospitals in England were treating 50% more Covid patients now than during the April.
It is likely that Stevens has an extra day’s data to that available on the government’s coronavirus dashboard but, as of 8am yesterday (6 January), 27,727 patients were being treated in NHS England hospitals. That is 46% more patients than at April peak (18,974 Covid patients on 12 April).
He added that all regions were treating more patients now than at their first wave peak, a figure that is “accelerating very, very quickly”.
Again, this may well be the case as the public facing data only runs until yesterday but as of 8am on 6 January all but one region (the north-west) had treated more patients on at least one day last week than they did on their worst day in April.
However, the north-west is very close to its spring peak: 2,996 people were being treated in the region yesterday compared to 3,065 on 13 April.
The regions with the worst comparative first-wave to second-wave are the East of England (126% higher) and the south-east (109%).
Updated
A total of 1.3 million people across the United Kingdom had received the first of two Covid vaccinations by Sunday.
This means that, in the three weeks to 3 January, just short of 2.4% of over-16s (children will not receive the vaccine in the UK) have received their first inoculation.
According to the data released on the government dashboard a short time ago Northern Ireland has had the highest vaccination rate of the four nations to date at 2.7% of its 16+ population followed by Scotland (2.5%); England (2.4%) and Wales (1.9%).
As well as the 1.3 million first-dose vaccines a further 21,313 people have received a second dose: 19,981 of them in England; 1,271 in Northern Ireland; 36 in Scotland and 25 in Wales in the week to 3 January.
However, the vaccination system will need to double the number of first-dose vaccinations each week within the next fortnight if they are to reach the most vulnerable by mid-February according to analysis carried out exclusively for the Guardian.
According to analysis carried out by 7bridges, a company which provides an AI-powered logistics platform to industry, including healthcare providers, the vaccination regime needs to reach at least 2 million people per week in the coming weeks in order to vaccinate the most vulnerable groups.
However 333,224 vaccinations were carried out in England in the week to 3 January, representing just one-sixth of that figure.
At the start of this press conference Boris Johnson said 113,000 people in Scotland have now been vaccinated, not 13,000, as an earlier post wrongly said. (See 5.10pm.) That’s now been fixed. Sorry.
Updated
The rate of Covid infections in the community is far higher in many neighbourhoods of Scotland than the headline data shows, reaching 4,500 cases per 100,000 people in the south west, according to new research by BBC Scotland.
Public Health Scotland data published after freedom of information requests by BBC Scotland show that in Stranraer, the town next to two ferry terminals for Northern Ireland, the infection rates range from 3,148 cases per 100,000 in Stranraer West to 4,456 in Stranraer South.
The official headline data for PHS shows Dumfries and Galloway is one of the worst affected council areas in Scotland. It has a seven-day average infection rate of 551 people per 100,000, and Jason Leitch, national clinical director, argued earlier this week Scotland’s rates are much lower than in southern England or Wales.
The PHS data dashboard also provides very broad averaged-out figures for each council district. For the area of Dumfries and Galloway which include Stranraer, its public data puts that area in the range of 400+.
But after requests by the BBC journalist Marc Ellison, PHS released new zonal data and published it elsewhere on its site which shows the actual rates are far more substantial than the averaged-out ones published by PHS.
THREAD: After several months of lobbying and an FOI appeal, Public Health Scotland is now publishing #coronavirus case data by intermediate zone.
— Marc Ellison (@marceellison) January 7, 2021
I took a gander at this for @BBCScotlandNews to find out which areas are the hardest-hit as case numbers soar. pic.twitter.com/l5cEMUzVcD
He found that areas of Glasgow such as Darnley West, the figure is 714 per 100,000, and nearby in Carnwadric West 756. Glasgow’s headline rate is 344. In Scottish Borders, Ellison reports, the highest rate is 1,654 per 100,000 and in Highland, it is 1,205 cases per 100,000 in Inverness West Rural.
London Nightingale hospital to open next week, NHS chief executive says
Q: Why wasn’t more done to protect London hospitals?
Stevens says the chief medical officers said on Monday there was a material risk of the NHs being overwhelmed within 21 days.
He says the London Nightingale hospital will open next week. It will also operate as a vaccination centre.
Q: How long will it be before grandmas can be hugged, and care home residents can have a day out with relatives?
Johnson says, by 15 February, if things work as people hope they will, the government will be able to look at relaxations. Schools will be the priority. And by the spring, by April, “things will be very different”, he says.
And that’s it. The press conference is over.
Q: People who have had one shot of the Pfizer vaccine are worried they won’t get the second one in time. Can you reassure them?
Yes, says Stevens. He says his parents are both in the 80s. Neither has had a jab yet. As a consequence of this policy, both will be able to get the first single dose early. Otherwise only one would.
Q: What do you think the toll of the virus will be?
Johnson says he cannot say. But tragically it will be too high.
What happens will depend on whether people follow the guidance, he says.
Johnson says the government should be setting itself a difficult vaccination target because that is what the public wants.
Q: Will non-Covid patients get normal standards of care over the next few weeks?
The situation in London is very serious, Stevens says. Some 800 Covid patients are being admitted a day. That is the equivalent of an entire St Thomas’s hospital.
It is vital the infection rate is brought under control, he says.
Stevens says uptake of the vaccination is likely to be high. There has been a “very good response” when people have been offered a vaccine.
But the NHS will also make an effort to get people to come forward from groups who have been subject to misinformation. He says some minority ethnic groups have been targeted with “disgraceful” misinformation.
Q: Do you now regret not locking down earlier? Many people in hospital now will have been infected before Christmas.
Johnson says the government was told about the new variant on 18 December. It went into the new tier measures about 24 hours later.
Q: What is your message for people who say the NHS is not under pressure?
Johnson says they need to “grow up”.
Stevens says people who sneak into a hospital, post a picture of any empty corridor on social media, and claim they are not under pressure are lying. These claims are also an insult to NHS staff.
Q: Why are GPs not getting regular supplies of the vaccine?
Johnson says to the best of his knowledge they are getting both vaccines.
But he says in the early days there will be “lumpiness and bumpiness” in the distribution process.
Stevens says today is day one for GPs getting the AstraZeneca vaccine. “There will be bumps along the road,” he says.
Johnson says Trump was 'completely wrong' to cast doubt on election result and to encourage protesters
Q: Do you blame President Trump for what happened in Washington?
Johnson says all his life America has stood for freedom and democracy. In so far as Trump encouraged people to go to congress, and cast doubt on the results of the election, Trump was “completely wrong”, he says.
Updated
Q: University students are not getting a good deal in coming week. What can be done to help them?
Johnson says students cannot go back to university. He has been asked about this a lot. He knows how frustrating this is, and how frustrating the financial aspects are. Gavin Williamson will say more about this soon.
UPDATE: Here is the quote.
I think we need to look very hard at the deal that students are getting.
We need to see what more we can do, frankly, to support students and to help them in what has been a very, very difficult time.
Of course, at the moment they are not able to go back to their universities, except in a very few key practical courses, and I know how frustrating that is and I know the financial frustrations that that entails.
I can tell you that we are looking at that now and that you’ll be hearing more about that from the education secretary.
Updated
Q: How can early years provision be safe if primary schools are considered a vector?
Johnson says he thinks primary schools are safe. But they have to look at the “overall budget of risk”.
Stevens says he defers to the advice of the chief medical officer and Sage on this. But he says early years care is important because it allows health workers to go to work.
Brigadier Phil Prosser, who is coordinating the army’s support for the programme, says his team is embedded in the NHS.
Their main contribution is planning support, he says.
He says his day job is delivering supplies to the army at times of war, he says.
He says his team has worked “shoulder to shoulder” with the NHS. They have to make sure everyone has access to the vaccine. They have to flexible enough to cope with care homes. They have to manage the logistical problems of keeping the vaccine at the right temperature. And they have to make sure it does not get wasted.
He says they are using tried and tested techniques.
There are 21 vaccination quick reaction teams, he says.
This operation is unparalleled in its scale and complexity, he says.
He says it has been the equivalent of setting up a major supermarket chain in a month.
He says he is a proud member of the armed forces, an organisation drawn from all communities of the UK, and the Commonwealth. He is proud to be serving those communities, he says.
Stevens says if people in the top four priority groups get vaccinated, that should prevent the vast majority of Covid deaths.
He says the UK has vaccinated more people than countries like Germany and France.
But the target is challenging, he says. There are just 39 days to go to hit the target.
They have to expand supply. But the supply is expanding, he says.
They have to increase the number of places carrying out vaccines. Most vaccination will take place at GP practices, where GPs will vaccinate their local patients.
Hospital hubs will be used. And there are also larger vaccination centres, which will work seven days a week, with extended hours. These may be more convenient for some people, he says.
He says there has been talk in the press about Israel’s successful programme. They have used large vaccination centres. But, he says, the UK’s geography means a mixed approach should work better.
Over 80,000 people have been trained on these vaccinations, he says. Some 18,000 of them have already started work. St John Ambulance have contributed volunteers to. And the armed forces are involved as well, he says.
Simon Stevens, the NHS England chief executive, says the pressures on the NHS are real and growing. The number of Covid patients in hospital is growing “very, very rapidly”.
Johnson says they have vaccinated 1.26 million people in England, 113,000 in Scotland 49,000 in Wales and 46,000 in Northern Ireland. That is nearly 1.5 million people in the UK, he says.
He says by the end of this month he hopes to have offered every elderly care home resident a vaccine.
Updated
Johnson says people should be able to get vaccine within 10 miles of home
Johnson says by the end of the week there will be over 1,000 GP sites, 223 hospital sites, seven giant vaccination centres and 200 community pharmacies delivering the vaccine.
Everyone should have a vaccination available within 10 miles, he says.
Boris Johnson's press conference
Boris Johnson opens his press conference saying the one question people want answered is how fast the vaccine will be delivered.
People want to know the government is “throwing everything at it, round the clock if necessary”, he says.
He says people have a right to know how the government will meet its target of getting people in the top four priority groups, some 15 million people in the UK, vaccinated with the first dose by 15 February.
Downing Street has confirmed that its plan for televised briefings with political journalists has been postponed due to the latest lockdown, PA Media reports. The White House-style televised press conferences, set to be led by the PM’s new press secretary Allegra Stratton, had been due to start next week. No 10 said that instead of the regular TV briefings at least three press conferences a week will take place, led by Boris Johnson or other relevant ministers and scientific experts, for “the next few weeks”.
Here are the main points from Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Commons health committee. It was only a one-hour hearing (which is relatively short, for a Commons committee), but it had been arranged at short notice. Here are the main points.
- Hancock said people may need to have a coronavirus vaccine every six months. He said:
I anticipate we will probably need to revaccinate because we don’t know the longevity of the protection from these vaccines. We don’t know how frequently it will be, but it might need to be every six months, it might need to be every year.
- He said he was confident that this would be the last of the lockdowns.
- He clarified what the government’s target was for getting people in the first four priority groups vaccinated by 15 February. By then people would be “offered to have had the vaccine” - ie, they would not just be offered a date for the future. The four priority groups are: older care home residents and staff, everyone over 70, all frontline NHS and care staff, and all those who are clinically extremely vulnerable.
- He said said Covid vaccines that require adjustments to fight new variants of the virus may not need to go through the usual full trials process. He said:
As with the flu vaccine each year, for a type of vaccine that has been clinically trialled and approved, if you make small adjustments to it, then it may not need the full year-long trials process that a new vaccine needs. That, of course, is a decision for the independent MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency).
The way I have described it, is if you are lucky to have Range Rover and you get a new wing mirror stuck on it, it’s still a Range Rover and should be classified as such.
In the same way, if you make a small change to a vaccine it’s essentially a regulatory clinical decision as to whether that needs to go through the full panoply of the full three phases of clinical trials.
UK records 1,162 further Covid deaths
The UK government has just updated its coronavirus dashboard, and the death figures are not getting any better. Here are the key statistics.
- The UK has recorded 1,162 further coronavirus deaths. That is more than 100 more than the total for yesterday (1,041), and it is the second highest total for daily deaths, as listed by date reported. The only day with higher death toll by this measure on the government’s dashboard was 21 April, when 1,224 deaths were reported, although that was not a figure that was published at the time. (At that point the government’s headline UK figure only covered hospital deaths.)
- The UK has recorded 52,618 further cases. That is the lowest daily total since Wednesday last week (50,023), and almost 10,000 below yesterday’s total (62,322), but week on week, cases are still up 34%.
- The number of coronavirus patients in hospital in England reached 27,727 yesterday. The day before it was 26,467. The most recent UK figure is for Tuesday, when there were 30,370 Covid patients in UK hospital. That was a slight fall on the total for Monday (30,507), but hospital numbers are still well above where they were at the peak during the first wave.
Jeremy Hunt, the committee chair, and a former health secretary, ends the session by thanking Hancock for his time. He says the NHS may now be facing its most challenging week ever.
Hancock says the government has not yet decided in what order people will be vaccinated once people in the priority groups identified by the JCVI have been covered. (In other words, who goes first when the programme reaches healthy people under 50.) Hancock says teachers, nursery staff and the police would all have a good case for being considered as priorities at that point.
Hancock says people may need to get Covid vaccine every six months
Hancock says we do not know yet whether people will need to have the coronavirus vaccine more than once, as with the flu vaccine. He says he thinks people will probably need to get revaccinated. He says this might have to happen every six months, or it might have to happen every year.
Updated
Summary
Hancock says he will publish a mental health white paper next week. It will take forward many of the recommendations in the Simon Wessely report. He says he wants to legislate in this parliament. The new law will replace the 1983 Mental Health Act. He hopes there will be cross-party support for this.
Q: What is the plan if a variant comes along that is immune to the vaccine?
Hancock says, if you have a vaccine platform, and you only need to make small adjustments to it, then it should not need to start the regulatory process all over again.
He compares this to having a Range Rover, and changing the wing mirror. That does not mean you have a new car. It is still a Range Rover, he says.
Q: How many vaccines do you hope to deliver by mid-February to people in the top four priority groups?
Hancock says he would like take-up to be 100%.
People will be “offered to have had the vaccine” by 15 February. That is the target, he says. He says the government cannot claim to have met the target just by offering people a date for a jab before 15 February.
He says the target specifies an “offer” because the government cannot force people to take the vaccine.
Updated
Q: There was a doubling of still births in the last lockdown. Will shielding go before 28 weeks?
Hancock says that is a clinical matter.
Q: Prof Whitty says we need to have a discussion about what the level of acceptable risk would be. Is the government having that discussion?
Hancock says we need to have a discussion about that. Parliament, and this committee, will have a role to play in that, he says.
Q: Are you worried about people’s behaviour changing as more and more people get vaccinated?
Hancock says generally people have been complying with the rules.
As vulnerable people are protected, he says he hopes people will continue to follow the rules.
Q: What is the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed? 10% 50%?
Hancock says it is impossible to put a figure on it. As pressure on the NHS grows, it becomes more stretched.
Q: Will the NHS be able to cope in London?
Hancock says he has faith in the NHS. Critical care capacity has been expanded. And the Nightingale is available, he says. Reports that it was decommissioned were wrong, he says.
Q: Why is there no dashboard available providing local information about vaccinations?
Hancock says, as the programme expands, more and more information will be released.
Hancock says he is a big fan of community pharmacies.
But he says they were not involved in plans to use the Pfizer vaccine because it has to be stored at -70C.
He says he is confident they have enough delivery sites coming on stream. And he says there will be a big role for community pharmacies to play as the AstraZeneca vaccine is rolled out.
Q: What is happening with mass testing?
Hancock says this will continue to be important, as will the self-isolation going with it.
Q: You say people in the top four priority groups for vaccination account for 80% of all deaths. Does that mean, when they are vaccinated, deaths will fall by 80%?
Hancock says he has two caveats. First, after vaccination, it takes time for the vaccine to take effect. And, second, deaths lag behind infections.
But he says he is confident that deaths will fall once the vaccinations have taken place.
Q: What will you do to help ensure people who need cannabis medicine, like Alfie Dingley, can still get it after Brexit?
Hancock says he is looking at this. The problem has been caused by a decision taken by the Dutch government, he says. He says they are looking to see if there is a quick legal fix. In the long term he would like a permanent solution, he says.
Q: Why did you not hold a press conference to announce the change to the vaccination policy? Some experts are unhappy about the plan to delay the second dose.
Hancock says there was a press conference on the day this was announced.
He says there has been a lot of communication about the reason for this. Ultimately it “saves more lives”, he says.
He says the data show that both the Oxford and Pfizer jobs provide significant protection after the first dose.
This document explains the case for this decision in more detail.
Q: Why don’t we insist on people flying into the country having a pre-flight test?
Hancock says measures are targeted. For example, there are specific restrictions on arrivals from South Africa, as there were for Denmark.
Q: Couldn’t we have taken that decision on the Thursday or Friday the previous week?
Hancock says the government did act quickly.
He says in the week before the data was less clear. But as the post-Christmas data came through, the picture became clearer.
Updated
Matt Hancock questioned by MPs
The Commons health committee is now taking evidence from Matt Hancock, the health secretary.
Jeremy Hunt, the committee chair, asks why the lockdown was not announced more quickly.
Hancock says the government had already tightened restrictions. On 4 January it was clear further action was needed. And that was the day the chief medical officers put the alert level up.
Updated
NHS England records 661 more Covid hospital deaths
NHS England has recorded 661 further coronavirus hospital deaths. The details are here.
That is the second highest daily figure for hospital deaths in this wave of the epidemic, and only the second time the daily total has passed 600. The highest figure so far came yesterday, when there were 674 deaths.
MPs in Birmingham have asked the health secretary, Matt Hancock, to provide urgent clarity on the vaccine rollout in the city, as they said they were due to run out of the jabs by tomorrow and had no idea when more supplies would arrive.
Ian Ward, the leader of Birmingham city council, said he had learned today that England’s second city – which has a population of 2.6 million – had not yet been supplied with any of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and that its allocation of Pfizer jabs were due to run out by tomorrow “with currently no clarity on when further supplies will arrive”.
In a letter also signed by the Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell and Labour MP Liam Byrne, Ward asked Hancock to prove more detail on the rollout of the vaccines in Birmingham. He added:
It remains unclear who is responsible for overseeing the vaccination programme in Birmingham and whom we should hold to account for progress and delivery. I am sure you would agree that such a lack of transparency is unhelpful and frustrating.
Here's the cross-party letter with @BrumLeader & Brum MP's setting out the urgent information we need to get a grip of the vaccination plan in Birmingham
— Liam Byrne (@liambyrnemp) January 7, 2021
Noone knows who's in charge of the programme. There's no AZ vaccines in the 2nd City (Though we're just an hr from Oxford) pic.twitter.com/BiVfHdErEE
Tories urged to suspend politicians who likened US violence to anti-Brexit protests
Labour has called for the Conservative party to suspend two senior Tory figures who equated the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump with people opposing Brexit, my colleague Peter Walker reports.
Public Health England has published its weekly Covid surveillance report (pdf).
PHE says “case rates have increased across all age groups, with the highest rate, 842.5 per 100,000 population, seen in those aged between 20 and 29 years old”. And it says “case rates per 100,000 have increased across all regions and are the highest in London with a rate of 904.8 per 100,000 population.”
And it says the hospital admission rate for Covid was 27.6 per 100,000 last week, compared to 21.51 per 100,000 in the previous week.
Updated
Hospital intensive care units in Scotland are now above normal capacity as they cope with an upsurge in Covid-19 cases at the same time as the normal rise of critical care cases seen in mid-winter, Nicola Sturgeon has disclosed.
While the number of Covid patients in intensive care today, at 100, is significantly lower than at the peak of the pandemic in spring 2020, the first minister said ICU units were also dealing with normal critical care cases such as heart attack and car accident patients.
Speaking at her daily briefing, she said:
I don’t want anyone to take that as a sign that ICU is not under pressure.
There were over 231 patients in total yesterday in ICU compared to 220 the day before, and that number is above baseline capacity of ICU. That’s above what it would normally be in a winter. ICU is under severe pressure.
She said the number of Covid-19 patients in hospital, at 1,467, was very close to the peak of 1,520 in April. The new variant of Covid-19, B117, is responsible for around 50% of new cases in Scotland. It is widely expected that surge in hospitalisations will lead to increased ICU cases, and deaths, during January.
Intensive care Covid cases reached 208 in mid-April 2020, with more than 150 cases a day between 3 and 21 April.
“There’s no doubt about it, some of these units are under incredible pressure coping with the complexity of the patients they’re seeing,” said Dr Gregor Smith, Scotland’s chief medical officer. However, treatments and respiratory care for critical Covid patients had improved significantly since the first wave.
Updated
The NASUWT teaching union has asked ministers for teachers to be given higher priority in receiving vaccines, after data from Birmingham, Leeds and Greenwich local authorities showed teachers were far more likely to become infected with Covid-19 than the general population.
In Birmingham, the infection rate among school staff in October-November was more than three times higher than the city as a whole, while in Leeds the weekly prevalence rate was 1,089 per 100,000 for primary staff and 1,750 for secondary staff, compared with 404 across the local authority.
“The NASUWT has clear evidence that teachers and education staff are at higher risk of contracting the coronavirus and it is our view that further measures are needed to protect all education staff from contracting this deadly virus,” the NASUWT’s general secretary, Patrick Roach, wrote in letters to Matt Hancock and Gavin Williamson.
Updated
Northern Ireland has recorded 1,410 further coronavirus cases and 17 more deaths.
The Department of Health #COVID19 dashboard has been updated.
— Department of Health (@healthdpt) January 7, 2021
1,410 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. Sadly, a further 17 deaths have been reported (3 deaths were outside the current reporting period.)https://t.co/YN16dmGzhv pic.twitter.com/C960iYEaZb
According to charts on the Northern Ireland dashboard, the seven-day average for new cases is now starting to fall.
Daily deaths have also been falling, according to the seven-day rolling average, although the decline has not been constant.
Today’s NHS test and trace figures (pdf) show the proportion of infected people being reached by the service fell to its lowest level since late October as 84.9% were contacted.
The number of people being transferred to test and trace had almost doubled in two weeks to 30 December – from 139,332 to 269,886 – as demand on the system surged during December.
The number of people reached within 24 hours fell to its lowest level since mid-November, with 73% of people contacted within a day in the latest week, compared with 80% the previous week.
It is no longer possible to accurately say how many close contacts of infected people were reached by test and trace after the government changed the way it published these figures, inflating the success rate.
A person is now counted as having been successfully contacted if a member of their household has been reached and told to self-isolate, whereas before each member of the household had to be contacted individually.
This has significantly boosted the success rate from fewer than 60% of close contacts being reached to more than 90% under the new model.
Experts have criticised this as artificially increasing the figures, thus making it more difficult to understand the effectiveness of the £22bn system, and because it means the government is relying on people to tell others to self-isolate instead of contacting them through official channels, which may improve adherence.
Updated
Wales’s vaccination programme appears to be lagging behind the other UK nations, new figures from Public Health Wales suggest.
Almost 50,000 people have been vaccinated, according to the PHW figures – around 1.6% of the population compared with almost 2% for England.
PHW advises that the statistics do not include people who have had the new Oxford vaccine this week and calls the figures a “snapshot”, with the real number likely to be higher.
There has been no breakdown of what groups of people have had the jabs and the Welsh Tories are pointing out that the rollout appears to be slower in north Wales.
Andrew RT Davies, the shadow health minister, said:
We are renewing our call for the first minister to establish the post of vaccinations minister as a priority to take overarching control of the rollout of this life-saving programme here and to publish targets for the vaccination programme and a daily tally of those that have had the vaccine.
Updated
Labour, the TUC and the Daily Mirror have launched a joint campaign to encourage people to volunteer to help the coronavirus vaccination programme. Explaining the campaign, Sir Keir Starmer said:
We’ve got 500,000 members in the Labour party, we’ve got millions of trade unionists and our campaign today is to say to them: play your part, step up, put aside your differences, we need volunteers.
If you look at the set-up here, you’ve got people administering the jab but you’ve also got to get people here, you’ve got to get the information to them, steward them in, and volunteers can do all that.
Updated
Brexit paperwork on deliveries to Northern Ireland from Great Britain is creating an overwhelming amount of work, the Northern Ireland assembly has been told. The claim was made by Seamus Leheny, who covers Northern Ireland policy for Logistics UK, which represents the haulage industry. He said the need to show that goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland comply with EU food standards was causing problems for hauliers. He explained:
They have been simply overwhelmed by the work. That is the case across the industry. People in Great Britain have not been aware of the volume of administration that this would involve.
You cannot simply wish away friction and administration when you implement customs controls anywhere in the world.
As PA Media reports, Leheny said a lot of businesses had taken a step back to consider how to manage movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. He said the pressure was on perishable chilled meats and fruit and vegetables, whose suppliers could not afford long delays.
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has tweeted again about the events in Washington. His latest comments are slightly more condemnatory than his tweet last night (see 9.39am), but he has not personalised it by referring directly to Donald Trump.
After the shocking events yesterday, it was good to see the resumption of US Congress and the certification of President Elect Biden’s victory. (1/2)
— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) January 7, 2021
It sends an important message that the democratic will of the US people cannot be challenged or overturned by the actions of a violent minority. The UK condemns yesterday’s violence unequivocally. (2/2)
— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) January 7, 2021
Public Health Wales has recorded 1,718 further coronavirus cases and 63 more deaths.
The rapid COVID-19 surveillance dashboard has been updated.
— Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) January 7, 2021
💻 https://t.co/zpWRYSUbfh
📱 https://t.co/HSclxpZjBh
Read our daily statement here: https://t.co/u6SKHz0zsG pic.twitter.com/ecM0zLNe3Z
Jamie Jenkins, a former ONS statistician, says Wales may be at a turning point for Covid prevalence. Wales has effectively been in lockdown since before Christmas.
07 Jan - Cases per 100k in Wales starting to turn back down and the % of tests coming back positive also starting to fall so we are now at the turning point in reducing the Covid-19 prevalence in Wales if this continues for several more days. pic.twitter.com/FhO8qQrHsv
— Jamie Jenkins (@statsjamie) January 7, 2021
Some primary schools are up to 70% full because so many parents are saying their key worker status justifies their children going in, a union leader has claimed. Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the school leaders’ union NAHT, said there was a contrast with the first lockdown, when far fewer children were being sent in. He told the programme:
We’re increasingly concerned about the sheer demand for key worker and vulnerable pupil places this week.
Our members are telling us that demand for places is much higher than it was during the first lockdown last spring. We’ve heard stories of some schools having 50-70% in.
This could seriously undermine the impact of lockdown measures, and may even run the risk of extending school closures.
Whiteman said it was critical that school places were only taken up by parents “when absolutely necessary” in order to stem the spread of the virus.
Theresa May, who had a difficult relationship with Donald Trump when she was prime minister, has posted this tweet about yesterday’s mob assault on congress.
After yesterday's disturbing scenes at the Capitol, I welcome that Congress has certified @JoeBiden as the next President. The orderly transition of power is a hallmark of a mature democracy. There is no place for the rule of the mob.
— Theresa May (@theresa_may) January 7, 2021
At the start of her news conference Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, also made some announcements about vaccinations and about housing.
- Sturgeon said Scotland was now more than half way through vaccinating all care home residents with their first dose. She went on:
That is extremely important. More than a third of the people who died with Covid last week died in our care homes, and we very much hope that the vaccine will very soon start to significantly reduce the risk of care home residents becoming ill with the virus.
- She said Scotland was aiming to ensure that all people over 80 had their first dose of the vaccine within the next four weeks.
- She said that from next week more than 1,100 vaccination sites would be operating in Scotland. Mostly they would be GP practices and community vaccination centres, she said. Later mass vaccination centres and pharmacies would be involved too, she said.
- She said that from Monday the Scottish government would publish daily statistics on the number of being people being vaccinated. (Boris Johnson has also said that the UK government will start publishing daily vaccination figures for England from Monday.)
- She said the Scottish government was extending regulations to prevent evictions during the pandemic. They were due to expire on 22 January, but she said they would be extended to 31 March. If necessary, they would be extended further, she said. She told journalists:
We’ve seen a major increase in new cases and the new variant, of course, is gaining ground rapidly. That means, if anything, there’s no an even greater public health need to prevent evictions.
Updated
Sturgeon says Covid hospital numbers in Scotland now close to levels in April
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is holding her daily coronavirus briefing. As usual, she started with the latest figures.
- Sturgeon said there have been 2,649 more positive cases. She said 11.3% of tests carried out were positive.
- She said that 1,467 people were in hospital with Covid. That was 83 more than yesterday, and it means hospital numbers are now close to where they were in the first wave of the epidemic, she said.
NS: "Now. this number pretty closely now matches the numbers that were in hospital at the peak of the first wave back in April. 100 people are in intensive care, which is 5 more than yesterday."
— The SNP (@theSNP) January 7, 2021
NS: "The intensive care number is still well below the peak that we saw back in April, but nevertheless I want to stress that pressure on our ICU units is increasing..."
— The SNP (@theSNP) January 7, 2021
- She said there have been 78 further deaths. That is the highest daily death toll announced by the Scottish government during this phase of the pandemic.
Updated
Scotland recorded another 383 deaths from Covid over the Christmas and New Year period, nearly all taking place in hospitals and care homes, National Records of Scotland has reported.
The agency warned that figure was very likely to be an under-count of the true number since registration offices were closed over the holidays. Even so, the new data has taken the total number of deaths in Scotland where Covid is listed on the death certificate to 6,686 up to 3 January.
Pete Whitehouse, director of statistical services at NRS, said:
These statistics show the continuing grief that the virus is causing in our communities.
Although the statistics for weeks 52 and 53 show a slight fall in the number of Covid-19 related deaths, there were fewer registrations than usual in these weeks due to public holidays.
As a result the number of registered deaths is likely to be an undercount from the impact of public holidays on registration activity. We expect figures to increase over the next fortnight as registration activity returns to normal.
The NRS data showed 200 deaths took place over the week of 21 to 27 December, and 183 the following week. Three-quarters of those were of people aged 75 or over, with 8% under 65.
These weekly figures remain well below the peak of the pandemic in April and May, when NRS had registered as many as 662 deaths involving Covid in a week.
Updated
A photocall staged by Matt Hancock backfired this morning when it turned out that the GP surgery he was visiting has not yet benefited from the vaccine rollout he was promoting.
Speaking outside the Bloomsbury Surgery in central London, Hancock, the health secretary, said:
It’s great news this morning that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is from right now being rolled out to GP surgeries across the country.
For the first three days with the Oxford vaccine we did it in hospitals to check that it was working well and it’s working well so now we can make sure that it gets to all those GP surgeries that like this one can do all the vaccinations that are needed.
But Ammara Hughes, a partner at the surgery, told Sky News that its first delivery of AstraZeneca’s vaccine had been pushed back 24 hours until tomorrow. The surgery has been vaccinating patients with the Pfizer vaccine.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, compared the incident to an episode of The Thick of It.
Like something from the ‘Thick of It’ but sadly it’s no laughing matter.
— Jonathan Ashworth 😷 (@JonAshworth) January 7, 2021
This should be a clear reminder to ministers to move and heaven to get vaccination widely rolled out ASAP.
We’re in a race against time and we need to start with 2 million jabs a week urgently. https://t.co/UTj3lBFQWZ
Updated
Sir Keir Starmer has said that President Trump was to blame for what happened in Washington yesterday. Speaking to broadcasters, he said:
President Trump has to take responsibility.
What happened was appalling - it wasn’t protest, it was an attack on democracy - and responsibility lies with President Trump, there is no doubt about that.
Of course we all want an orderly transition. He should have said it a long time ago and so let’s have that orderly transition, let’s see President Trump take responsibility for his actions.
Often what he says isn’t matched by what he does, so the sooner we get that orderly transition the better.
Public health and police chiefs in Cornwall have expressed concern over a sharp rise in Covid cases in the county.
The rolling seven-day rate for Cornwall has soared from 18 new cases per 100,000 shortly before Christmas to more than 300 now.
Rachel Wigglesworth, Cornwall’s director of public health, said:
That is a rapid increase. This is a serious situation for Cornwall. We are only seeing the impact of Christmas gatherings now and it is only going to get worse.
Cllr Julian German, the leader of Cornwall council, said:
It is really important that people take the lockdown seriously. We need to see people stop going out and staying at home.
The police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall, Alison Hernandez, called on second home owners – and celebrities – not to travel to Cornwall. She said:
I would particularly like to appeal to celebrities and high profile social media stars. By not conducting unnecessary trips to the region you will be setting a fantastic example to the wider public and, in doing so, encouraging more people to stick to the rules.
At a time when stopping the spread of this terrible virus is more important than ever, I must urge people not to make unnecessary journeys to the region.
Updated
Number of people testing positive in England up 24% in final week of December, report shows
The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England has reached its highest level since the pandemic began, according to government figures released this morning.
A total of 311,372 people in England tested positive at least once in the week to 30 December, almost double the previous high, and a 24% increase on the previous week.
This jump was in spite of a sharp drop in the number of people being tested over Christmas, when 29% fewer tests were carried out compared to the week to Christmas Eve.
This means the true number of infected people in the country is likely to be higher. The Office for National Statistics reported earlier this week that one in 50 people in England have Covid-19 in the latest week, equivalent to 1,122,000 people, and in some regions prevalence is even higher; in London it’s one in 30.
The figures, published by the government’s test and trace service, showed an improvement in turnaround times for coronavirus test results.
Just 16.9% of tests carried out in-person produced a result within 24 hours in the week to 23 December – the lowest percentage since mid-October – but this had increased to 33% in the most recent week analysed.
This improvement may be a result of laboratories processing 750,564 fewer tests in the week to 31 December compared to the previous week, meaning there are fewer backlogs.
Last year Boris Johnson promised that all results from these types of tests would be delivered within 24 hours.
Updated
Some Conservative MPs have been much more outspoken in their comments on Donald Trump than Boris Johnson. This is from Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the Commons defence committee.
As I duel 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 national I cannot believe I’m now saying this but @realDonaldTrump is now a threat to America.
— Tobias Ellwood MP (@Tobias_Ellwood) January 7, 2021
Undermining democracy, inciting violence, fuelling decision & damaging what the nation stands for & believes in.
Why say this? He has 2 weeks left & will not go quietly pic.twitter.com/wmtQQbaqad
And this is from Simon Hoare, the chair of the Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee.
Yesterday proved Trump is a cult (yes, I’ve checked spelling). He’s tried to drag America’s reputation to below the sewers. He’s created domestic terrorists to mount a coup d’etat. He & his disciples should be treated as such by Homeland Security. GOP must deal with these rogues
— Simon Hoare MP (@Simon4NDorset) January 7, 2021
The latest NHS test and trace performance figures are out. There is a link here. I will post a summary shortly.
NHS Test and Trace statistics [since launch]
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) January 7, 2021
➡️ 17.2 million individuals tested at least once
➡️ 5,151,728 people reached by NHS Test and Trace
➡️ 86% of identified close contacts who provided contact details reached
Read the full report 👇
Leading medic says impact on NHS will be 'catastrophic' if people fail to take lockdown seriously
NHS hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed within a fortnight, a leading intensive care consultant said this morning. Prof Rupert Pearse, professor of intensive care medicine at Queen Mary University of London, said if people did not take the lockdown rules seriously, the impact on the NHS could be “catastrophic”. He told the Today programme:
We would normally want one fully trained intensive care nurse per intensive care patient, right now we’re down to one nurse to three and filling those gaps with untrained staff.
And we’re now faced with diluting that even further to one in four and as intensive care doctors we’re not sure how together we can deliver the quality of care we need to.
The problem’s not just in London, the problem’s now spreading across the UK.
Pearse said the problem was not confined to intensive care; respiratory wards, geriatric wards and primary care were also under pressure, he said.
Asked if he thought the health service could be overwhelmed within two weeks, Pearse said:
I never thought in my entire career that I might say something like this but yes I do. Unless we take the lockdown seriously the impact on healthcare for the whole country could be catastrophic. And I don’t say those words lightly.
Pearse was also particularly critical of MPs who have spoken out against the need for the lockdown, as a few did in the Commons debate yesterday. He said:
It is really disappointing to see public figures chip away at public confidence in the value of the lockdown.
And in particular, seeing MPs speak out against public health measures to me seems very hard for me and my colleagues to forgive right now.
As my colleague Denis Campbell reports, doctors in London say the crisis is so serious that they could soon end up with as many as 5,000 patients or more left without hospital beds.
Patel urges police to act 'robustly' in enforcing Covid lockdown rules
As well as fielding questions about President Trump (see 9.24am), Priti Patel, the home secretary, also spoke about coronavirus policy during her broadcast interview round this morning. Here are the main points she made.
- Patel said the police should “robustly” enforce England’s lockdown restrictions. Yesterday the Metropolitan police said it would adopting a stricter approach to enforcing this lockdown than in the past. On the Today programme, Patel said she supported this. “It’s right that police act robustly,” she said.
- She said new measures at the border to prevent cases of coronavirus being imported into the UK would be announced “in the next few days”. It is expected that the government will require people arriving from abroad will be required to produce a recent negative coronavirus test.
- She refused to say whether she thought lockdown restrictions would be eased by March. Asked on LBC if that would happen, she replied:
I would love to say, of course we would love to see that and say that but that’s not for us to speculate. We all just need to absolutely whack this virus down, we’ve got to reduce the R factor ... it’s a wretched, wretched disease, it really is.
More than 1 million people in England have received their first vaccine dose while almost 20,000 have received their second inoculation, according to data released by NHS England this morning.
Of those who have received their first vaccine 60% are in the over-80s category with the remainder aged between 16 and 79.
Of those who have already received their second vaccine 32% were aged 80 and over and the remaining 68% in the 16- to 79-year-old age category.
When compared with previous data released by NHS England, the number of vaccines administered in the week to 3 January stood at an average of 46,695 per day. This is compared with 39,300 vaccines per day in the 20 days between 8 December and 27 December.
Updated
The Commons health committee has said that its hearing with Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will start at 3pm this afternoon, not 2.30pm as originally planned. I will be covering it in detail.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, was more critical of Donald Trump than Boris Johnson has been when she gave an interview to ITV’s Good Morning Britain today. She said:
On one level I think what happened last night, what we witnessed last night, is not that surprising. In some senses Donald Trump’s presidency has been moving towards this moment almost from the moment it started, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking.
What we witnessed weren’t just scenes of horrible breaches of law and order, people taking over the seat of democracy, we actually witnessed the president of the United States inciting insurrection in his own country and I think for many people it will take some time to get our heads round that.
Thankfully there’s only a matter of days of his presidency left. We heard Joe Biden last night remind us what a real leader, a real democratic leader, should sound like.
This has been a dark period in America’s history, there’s no doubt about it, and I would imagine many people in that country and across the world are looking forward to it coming to an end but clearly there are deep-seeded divides there that the new administration has to tackle and try to heal.
Boris Johnson will be joined at his press conference at 5pm this evening by Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, and Brigadier Phil Prosser, commander of 101 Logistics Brigade, which has been helping with the vaccination programme
Updated
The Labour MP Chris Bryant, a former Foreign Office minister, is also effectively calling for Donald Trump to be banned from the UK after he leaves office (because that would be one effect of Magnitsky-style sanctions).
We should consider Magnitsky style sanctions against all those who incited violence in the Capitol.
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) January 7, 2021
And he has posted these tweets about Boris Johnson’s response to the events in Washington yesterday.
No condemnation of Trump because they’re cut from the same cloth. Right-wing narcissist dilettantes both. https://t.co/khlsQ4kYwO
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) January 7, 2021
This is what @BorisJohnson should have said https://t.co/LVngcw7oUX
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) January 7, 2021
Updated
Scottish government minister suggests Trump should be banned from UK after he stands down
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s justice minister, has suggested that the Westminster government should ban Donald Trump from entering the UK after he leaves the White House on the grounds that his presence would not be conducive to the public good.
Once he leaves Office if Trump tries to come to UK the Home Sect should give serious consideration to denying him entry, she has the power if an applicant's presence is not conducive to the public good
— Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) January 7, 2021
Trump's default is to stir up racial tension & yday he incited a violent mob. pic.twitter.com/75fBChvFKQ
There has been speculation that Trump is planning to fly to Scotland the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Sir Kim Darroch, the former UK ambassador to the US, told the Today programme that Donald Trump was not fit to be president. Darroch said:
The scenes last night were appalling and difficult to imagine in America. Some of us though have been pointing out for a long time ... this guy was not fit to be president, is not fit to be president, and he doesn’t respect any of the norms of presidential behaviour.
And what happened last night, there’s no question, was the result of days of inciting his supporters to turn up in Washington and demonstrate outside the Capitol.
Darroch resigned as ambassador in July 2019 after the leak of a memo from him critical of Trump and after Boris Johnson, who was the favourite in the Tory leadership contest then taking place, refused to offer Darroch his support.
GPs in England are beginning the mass rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, PA Media reports. The vaccines are being delivered to sites across the country as the government commits to offering a vaccine to more than 13m people in the top four priority groups by mid February.
Boris Johnson will hold a press conference later, Sky’s Rob Powell reports.
PM Boris Johnson to chair a COVID press conference later today - timings and line up TBC
— Rob Powell (@robpowellnews) January 7, 2021
Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, was interviewed on the Today programme this morning about Donald Trump and Boris Johnson’s relationship with him. She did not go as far as she did in her tweet last night, when she called him “spineless” (see 9.24am), but she said Johnson and his government had been “very slow” in reacting to what the president had been doing.
When it was put to her that Johnson did condemn the mob attack on congress, she said she welcomed that, but she said that Trump had been using inflammatory language for some time.
When asked what Johnson should be doing now, Rayner said he should be “supporting [President-elect] Biden and making sure that there is a peaceful transition of power”. But she also said that Johnson should be “condemning what Donald Trump has done”, pointing out that even the former US president George W Bush has been willing to so so.
Here is Bush’s statement from last night. It does not mention Trump by name, but the references to the “reckless behaviour” of leaders who would not accept the election result and how the mob in Washington was “inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes” are clearly directed at the president.
— George W Bush↙️ (@real_GeorgeBush) January 6, 2021
This is what Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, posted on Twitter last night about the storming of congress by Trump supporters.
The US rightly takes great pride in its democracy, and there can be no justification for these violent attempts to frustrate the lawful and proper transition of power.
— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) January 6, 2021
Updated
Labour calls Johnson 'spineless' over Trump as Patel says US president provoked violence
Good morning. Mostly we will be focusing on Covid today, but this morning the UK news has been dominated by reaction to what has been happening in Washington - which is being covered in full our US Politics Live blog - and the debate about whether or not Boris Johnson and his ministers are being sufficiently critical of Donald Trump. British prime ministers always like to preserve good relations with their US counterparts, but Trump is one of the few world leaders who actually thought Brexit was a good idea and in the past Johnson and some of his ministers have praised him in terms that go beyond the merely diplomatic and polite.
Last night Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said that Johnson had been “spineless”, particularly because of his failure to “call out” Trump’s lies about the US presidential election being rigged.
The violence that Donald Trump has unleashed is terrifying, and the Republicans who stood by him have blood on their hands. Our spineless Prime Minister and toadying Foreign Secretary have to also take their fair share of shame for not calling out his lies after the election. https://t.co/pejDqWoAp4
— Angela Rayner 😷 (@AngelaRayner) January 6, 2021
Johnson, who has always accepted that Joe Biden won the election, but who has declined to explicitly condemn Trump’s failure to accept the result, posted this on Twitter last night.
Disgraceful scenes in U.S. Congress. The United States stands for democracy around the world and it is now vital that there should be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) January 6, 2021
This morning Priti Patel, the home secretary, was doing the morning interview round for No 10 and - unlike Johnson in his tweet last night - she did directly blame Trump (at least in part) for what happened in Washington yesterday. She said:
[Trump’s] comments directly led to the violence and so far he has failed to condemn that violence and that is completely wrong. He basically has made a number of comments yesterday that helped to fuel that violence and he didn’t do anything to de-escalate that whatsoever.
But she would not accept the charge that British ministers had got too close to the outgoing president, and she said it was more important to look to the future. She told the Today programme:
The fact of the matter is, they are now transitioning to a new president, to a president-elect. The prime minister has already been in touch with Joe Biden and certainly congratulated him. I think on that basis alone we move forward with one of our greatest allies in the world.
This isn’t about going back and reflecting on personal relationships. The fact of the matter is: Donald Trump’s words were associated with violence, his comments directly led to violence. And so far, he has failed to condemn that violence, and that is wrong.
I will post more on this row this morning, although over the course of the day mostly the blog will be focusing on coronavirus.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The ONS publishes a report on the impact of coronavirus on the economy.
11am: NHS test and trace performance figures are published.
12.15pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, holds a coronavirus briefing.
3pm: Matt Hancock, the health secretary, gives evidence to the Commons health committee.
5pm: Downing Street is expected to hold a press conference.
Here is our global coronavirus live blog.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
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