Category: #ukreport

Pubs and restaurants in English regions with spiralling coronavirus outbreaks are braced to close their doors within days as Downing Street prepares to tighten lockdown restrictions.

Boris Johnson signed off the lockdown measures last night “alongside new financial support and a simplified system of restrictions in England”, The Times reports. The plan has been met with fury by northern leaders, “who attacked the government for allowing it to leak without briefing them first” about the stricter regulations, the newspaper adds.

Regional lockdown measures have come under scrutiny in recent days after Labour leader Keir Starmer presented data that suggests infections have continued to rise in areas already under localised rules.

Which areas may be affected and how?

The new rules are expected to come into force on Monday and to be applied according to a three-tier system designed to simplify lockdown guidance.

Merseyside and other parts of northern England “will be placed in the highest tier as some hospitals start to run out of dedicated Covid beds and infections rise sharply”, according to The Times. “Tier one” would see hospitality businesses such as pubs, restaurants and cafes close, and possibly other leisure venues and hairdressers, although schools, universities and other businesses would remain open.

“Regions in the middle tier will be subject to a simplified version of existing local lockdown measures, while those in the lowest tier must observe national restrictions such as the ‘rule of six’,” says the newspaper.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick this morning refused to confirm or deny that new restrictions would be imposed next week. “It is correct to say the number of cases in the northwest and the northeast and a number of cities, particularly in the Midlands like Nottingham, are rising fast and that is a serious situation,” he told Times Radio.

“We are currently considering what steps we should take, obviously taking the advice of our scientific and medical advisers, and a decision will be made shortly.”

The Times says that the tougher restrictions will be rolled out along with a new system of “wage support for employees of businesses that were forced back into lockdown three months after opening”.

Whitehall sources claim the support “will be more generous than the scheme announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak last month, which subsidises a fifth of part-time wages”, the paper adds.

Northern fury

Leaders in the north of England have voiced frustration at not being consulted over the measures. Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham tweeted: “No discussion. No consultation. Millions of lives affected by Whitehall diktat. It is proving impossible to deal with this government.”

No. 10 has also been criticised Mayor of Liverpool Steve Rotheram, who last week warned the government that he would not support economically damaging restrictions. Rotheram told the Daily Mirror yesterday that “the government hasn’t responded to our requests to evidence the restrictions imposed in our area”.

Meanwhile, Labour leader Keir Starmer questioned why Tory constituencies such as Uxbridge and South Ruslip, the seat held by Johnson, were being spared further restrictions, while northern areas with lower levels of coronavirus were hit with harsh measures.

“The prime minister can’t explain why an area goes into restrictions, he can’t explain what the different restrictions are, and he can’t explain how restrictions end. This is getting ridiculous,” Starmer told Prime Minister’s Questions.

But despite the criticisms, Downing Street sources insist immediate tough action is necessary. An insider told The Sun that “the numbers are going the wrong way, and there will come a point very soon where we simply have to do more”.

According to the London Evening Standard, senior scientists have “begged” Johnson not to waste the chance to arrest the spread of Covid-19.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Professor Stephen Reicher, who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) behavioural science sub-group, said: “The good news is we have a window of opportunity to do something.

“If we squander that window of opportunity then we really are in trouble, then we really would be talking about going back to March in terms of full lockdown measures.”

A coronavirus vaccine could start being rolled out across the UK as early as next month, leaked NHS documents suggest.

The files reveal that officials are hoping two coronavirus vaccines could prove successful before the end of the year.

The documents outline plans for five mass-vaccination sites staffed by trainee nurses, physios and paramedics in cities including Leeds, Hull and London, The Sun reports.

The sites will will have capacity to inoculate “tens of thousands of people daily” before the festive season and will be supported by “mobile vaccination units” across the UK, the paper adds. The documents also outline plans for teams aided by military personnel to travel to care homes and high-risk households.

“The earliest we are likely to get the first trial results is in a month’s time – which means the best-case scenario for a potential roll-out is just before Christmas,” a health source told The Sun, adding that “there will be no delay in vaccination once we have a working jab”.

Once a vaccine is approved, the full roll-out is expected to take three to six months, with patients likely to need two injections 28 days apart for the treatment to work.

AstraZeneca, the firm partnering the Oxford University to develop a vaccine, is overseeing a scaling up of manufacturing in parallel with clinical testing so that hundreds of millions of doses can be available if their vaccine is shown to be effective. However, Kate Bingham, the head of the UK’s vaccine task force, has warned that only around 50% of the population will receive one.

“There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18,” Bingham told the Financial Times, adding: “It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable.”

Doctors in the West Midlands were last week told to prepare for a vaccine that would be ready by November, with 600,000 doses being manufactured nearby at Keele University, the BBC reports.

Speaking at the virtual Conservative party conference last weekend, Matt Hancock confirmed the plans “were in train”, adding: “It’s not just about developing the vaccine and then testing the vaccine – which is what’s happening now – it’s then a matter of rolling out the vaccine according to priority, according to clinical need.”

Vice-presidential debates usually slip by fairly unnoticed, with viewership figures falling steadily in the years since 2008’s clash between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

But with Donald Trump’s coronavirus battle casting doubt over whether the second presidential debate will go ahead, all eyes were last night on the head-to-head clash between Republican Vice-President Mike Pence and his Democratic rival California Senator Kamala Harris.

After a bruising debate between Trump and Biden last week, this standoff was touted as the only “sensible conversation we get to watch the two parties have in this year’s presidential contest”, The Ringer says.

So how did the two fare? And, with just 26 days to go until election day, who came out on top?

What was discussed?

Despite predictions that the debate would be a courteous affair, the evening saw some testy exchanges.

In a series of what the BBC calls “heated clashes”, Harris accused Trump and Pence of “the greatest failure of any presidential administration” in history, adding that the current administration deliberately mislead Americans over the threat of the virus.

“They knew, and they covered it up,” she said, referring to reports by Watergate journalist Bob Woodward that Trump deliberately downplayed the severity of the pandemic. “Frankly, this administration has forfeited their right to re-election based on this,” she added.

Pence, in response, accused the Democratic ticket of “plagiarism” over their strategy for tackling the pandemic, adding that the Democrats were “undermin[ing] public confidence in a vaccine if the vaccine emerges during the Trump administration”.

On the economy, the vice-president pledged that 2021 would be “the biggest economic year in the history of this country”, claiming that Biden plans to “raise your taxes and bury the economy”. Harris stepped in to clarify that Biden will not increase taxes on those earning less than $400,000 (£309,600) a year.

On climate change, Pence acknowledged that “the climate is changing”, but said the Democrats would “crush American energy” and “abolish fossil fuels”. Harris called climate change an “existential threat” to the planet.

When discussing racial inequality, Pence expressed dismay at the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota in May, but added that there was “no excuse for the rioting and looting that followed”.

He added that the suggestion the US is systemically racist and that law enforcement has an implicit bias against minorities is a “great insult”.

Harris responded: “Last week the president of the United States took the debate stage in front of 70 million Americans and refused to condemn white supremacists.”

Who won?

Pundits are torn over who claimed the win in Utah, with many sitting on the fence and calling it a dead heat.

BBC America reporter Anthony Zurcher said there was “no standout winner” but added that the “Democrats will be happy” with Harris’ performance.

“Both candidates had strong moments, and a few stumbles, over the course of the 90-minute affair,” he said. “But as far as lasting memories go, they were few and far between,” Zurcher writes.

“An unmemorable result, in and of itself, is good news for the Democrats and Joe Biden, who polls suggest are leading in the race,” he added.

Harris “clearly won the debate in terms of providing policy and detail and actually answering the questions”, according to The Independent‘s Holly Baxter. The Times agrees, saying that “if Democrats were looking for evidence that Harris might one day be able to campaign at the top of a presidential ticket, she gave it to them”.

“Pence entered with a tougher task than Ms Harris and it showed,” the paper adds. However, he succeeded in offering “Trumpism with a more conventional political style”.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter tweeted that Pence had “wiped the floor” with Harris. And unsuprisingly, Trump agreed, tweeting that Pence “won big”.

Joe Biden offered a more measured response, writing on Twitter that Harris “made us all proud tonight” and sharing a photo of himself holding a fly swatter, a reference to an insect that landed on Pence’s head during the event.

The majority of people with Covid-19 exhibit no “core” symptoms when they get tested, a major new study has found.

Scientists at University College London (UCL) analysed data on more than 36,000 people tested for coronavirus in the UK between April and June and found that of the 115 who tested positive, 88 (76.5%) presented no symptoms.

And a further 9.6% of people who tested positive showed none of the classic Covid symptoms – a cough, fever, or loss of taste and smell.

In a paper published in medical journal Clinical Epidemiology, the scientists conclude that “Covid-19 symptoms are a poor marker of (Covid) infection”.

That verdict have “prompted fears that future Covid-19 outbreaks will be hard to control without more widespread testing in the community to pick up ‘silent transmission’”, says The Guardian.

The UCL team are calling for a change in testing strategy based on the findings of their study – based on data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Covid Symptom Study, which surveys thousands of UK households every week regardless of whether the respondents have symptoms.

“Frequent and widespread testing of all individuals, not just symptomatic cases, at least in high-risk settings or specific locations” would be key to preventing transmission, they write.

Study co-author Irene Petersen, a professor of epidemiology at UCL, “said university students are one group who should be tested regularly, and definitely before they go home for Christmas”, The Telegraph reports.

“You may have a lot of people who are out in the society and they’re not self-isolating because they didn’t know that they are positive,” she added.

However, some experts believe the research findings may be misleading, according to the Science Media Centre, an independent press office for science.

Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator has hinted that Boris Johnson is willing to compromise with the EU about the contentious issue of state aid in order to land an “eminently achievable” trade deal.

Lord David Frost told members of the House of Lords and MPs yesterday that the prime minister is “prepared to discuss commitments on subsidy policy that go beyond conventional trade agreements”, The Times reports.

Subsidies to business, otherwise known as state aid, have become a sticking point in the talks, with Downing Street repeatedly insisting that it should not be part of any agreement with the EU.

“After a long period in which we’ve been making little progress on subsidy policy, we are having somewhat more constructive discussions on that subject, although unfortunately, the gap between us is still pretty wide and a lot of work has to be done,” Frost told the House of Lords EU Committee.

But “we’re beginning a discussion, is it possible to go further than normal in an FTA [free trade agreement] and agree some provisions that shape and condition subsidy policy on both sides”, he added.

The shift is believed to mark the first time that Britain has offered “more than the scantest detail about its planned subsidy regime after the post-Brexit transition period ends”, The Irish Times says.

Frost said the UK would not include an “extensive text setting out detail of how we design our [subsidy] system” in a deal with the EU, but added that the country may benefit from agreeing measures to resolve any future disputes with the bloc over state aid.

With just a week to go until the next EU summit, the coming seven days will be “critical” in determining whether a deal is possible, The Times says.

Frost struck an optimistic note, however, saying: “We’ve made progress. This is a wide-ranging agreement and in many areas the nature of the agreement is clear if not pinned down.”

Meanwhile, during a phone conversation yesterday, Johnson told European Council President Charles Michel that “although some progress had been made… significant areas of difference remain”.

Michel later tweeted: “The EU prefers a deal, but not at any cost. Time for the UK to put its cards on the table.”