1 - The R is being driven down
Scotland now has one of the lowest R values of any UK nation or region at 0.6-0.8, which means that the virus finds it difficult to spread even from one person to another.
SAGE released official estimates of the ‘R number’ and the regional values for the first time.
It is above 1 in parts of England
UK: 0.7- 0.9
England: 0.8-1.0
South West: 0.8-1.1
East England: 0.7-0.9
London, Midlands, North West, South East: 0.8-1.0
North East & Yorkshire 0.7-1.0
2 - Phone, wallet, facemask, check
England opens its shops on Monday and facemasks will be compulsory on public transport. Operators will be able to refuse permission to travel where someone isn’t using a face covering.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said a “gentle approach” to enforcement would be used over the “first couple of days” after face coverings are made compulsory on public transport in England on Monday.
He told the Downing Street briefing: “Remembering your face covering should be the same as picking up your phone, your wallet or your purse whenever you’re leaving your house.”
3 - Dominic Cummings, the Dom factor, hasn’t gone away.
Shapps was on the backfoot refuting claims that England’s chief nurse Ruth May has been dropped from Downing Street‘s daily coronavirus briefings after refusing to publicly back Dominic Cummings and the scandal over his trips to Durham and Barnard Castle during lockdown.
He said it wasn’t true but it appears Cummings, who broke the lockdown rules, has had his own Downing Street press conference while it seems that England’s Chief Nurse gets dropped from the Downing Street press conference for refusing to support him.
