Boris Johnson will share the government’s latest coronavirus data with the nation tomorrow, and is expected to confirm the next phase of easing restrictions on 19 July, according to vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi.
Appearing on Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Mr Zahawi revealed guidance will include being “expected to wear masks in indoor enclosed places” – even though the legal requirement to do so would be dropped.
Meanwhile, the government’s Test and Trace service is “panicking” as it rushes to fill thousands of vacant contact tracing positions – just months after making thousands of clinical staff redundant – amid fears a summer wave of coronavirus will see a 100,000 infections a day.
Under the plans, the new recruits will have no clinical training and be paid at substantially cheaper rates compared to the nurses and other clinical staff who were made redundant en masse in May, as test and trace bosses said demand on the service had reduced.
Olympic torch relay moved due to spike in Covid cases
The mayors of two Tokyo islands have asked the metropolitan government to take the planned Olympic torch relay off public roads, according to reports in Japan’s Kyodo News agency.
It comes amid a surge in coronavirus cases, the leaders of Oshima and Hachijo said.
Yoshihide Suga, the country’s PM, on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Tokyo.
Olympic officials last week barred all fans from venues in Tokyo and three neighbouring prefectures.
A man wearing a face mask walks past the countdown clock for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games near Shimbashi station
” height=”726″ width=”982″ srcset=”https://static.independent.co.uk/2021/07/09/10/Japan_Olympics_Countdown_85172.jpg?width=640&auto=webp&quality=75 640w” layout=”responsive” class=”i-amphtml-layout-responsive i-amphtml-layout-size-defined” i-amphtml-layout=”responsive”> A man wearing a face mask walks past the countdown clock for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games near Shimbashi station
Sturgeon urged to enforce same amber-list quarantine-free travel rule as England
Airline bosses and Scottish airports have written to Nicola Sturgeon asking her to bring in the same rules as England for quarantine-free travel from amber-list countries.
From 19 July, travellers from amber-list areas who have had both coronavirus vaccine doses will not have to self-isolate if they return to England.
CEOs from AGS Airports – which owns the terminals in Aberdeen and Glasgow – as well as easyJet, Loganair, Jet2 and Tui want to see the same exemption applied in Scotland, saying the UK government’s announcement was “a positive move towards the genuine reopening the sector has been looking for”.
“Connectivity is vital for Scotland, with current restrictions causing further ongoing damage to Scottish aviation and Scottish businesses, jeopardising tens of thousands of jobs up and down the country that depend on Scotland’s air links,” they write in the letter.
“We urge you to support travellers and Scotland’s aviation sector by bringing a quarantine exemption into effect for fully vaccinated UK residents from 19 July.”
A Scottish government spokeswoman said ahead of Ms Sturgeon’s next lockdown easing announcement: “We are considering relaxing restrictions for fully vaccinated travellers arriving from amber-list countries, but it needs to be fair and deliverable.”
Covid jabs suspended at Brighton site following anti-lockdown protest
Vaccinations at a site in Brighton have been postponed following anti-lockdown demonstrations in the city, after protestors surrounded a vaccination bus on the seafront on Saturday.
NHS Brighton and Hove CCG announced that vaccinations on Hove Lawns were postponed on Sunday “to ensure that everyone is able to receive their vaccine safely and without any pressure put upon them”.
The healthcare provider said its staff “experienced disruption during the anti-lockdown measures protest in the city”. Vaccinations are still available elsewhere in the city.
Brighton and Hove has experienced a sharp rise in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, with the area recording 423.5 cases per 100,000 people for the seven days to 5 July, according to data analysis by the PA news agency.
One of the protestors, who described the demonstration as “decent”, posted the below footage to Twitter.
Keep working from home after 19 July, PHE urges
People should continue to work from home for the next four to six weeks if they are able to do so amid surging cases of coronavirus, a Public Health England figure said today.
As Boris Johnson prepares to drop the work from home guidance on 19 July alongside vast swathes of legal restrictions, Dr Susan Hopkins warned the country was “approximately three doubling times away from the peak” of the third wave.
Speaking to Times Radio, the PHE adviser said she recognised the government was “very keen” to get people back to the office. “But I think over the next four to six weeks that needs to be very cautiously implemented by businesses to keep transmission down,” she insisted.
On Friday, 563 patients were admitted to hospital in the UK, reports our political correspondent Ashley Cowburn.
Scotland ‘past worse’ of current Covid peak, says health secretary
Scotland’s health secretary has said the country is “past the worst” of its current peak in coronavirus cases.
A “positive trend” was beginning to emerge in the data despite daily cases still being high, Humza Yousaf told reporters on Sunday.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday Show radio programme, Mr Yousaf said: “Now that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be another peak in the future but we’re beginning to see a stabilisation and beginning to see the cases level off. Still very high I must say, but we’re beginning to see a positive trend.”
Mr Yousaf said the government would take a “cautious not cavalier” approach to the new rules, which will begin on 19 July.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is due to set out the next set of changes to coronavirus restrictions in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday.
Yousaf spoke to the BBC on Sunday morning
” height=”726″ width=”982″ srcset=”https://static.independent.co.uk/2021/06/29/15/PA-60021553.jpg?width=640&auto=webp&quality=75 640w” layout=”responsive” class=”i-amphtml-layout-responsive i-amphtml-layout-size-defined” i-amphtml-layout=”responsive”> Yousaf spoke to the BBC on Sunday morning
Scotland records zero new deaths but over 2,000 new Covid cases
A further 2,048 cases of coronavirus were recorded in Scotland over the past 24 hours, but no new deaths.
The Scottish government’s figures for Sunday also showed the daily test positivity rate was at 11.2 per cent.
A total of 444 people were in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19, with 40 patients in intensive care, the data shows.
So far, 3,928,409 people in Scotland have received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and 2,877,326 have received their second dose.
Minister refuses to say whether PM was ‘wrong’ to claim link between Covid and serious disease ‘severed’
In case you missed it. Nadhim Zahawi earlier refused to comment on Boris Johnson’s claim that the UK had “severed” the link between Covid infection, hospitalisation, serious disease and death.
Our political correspondent Ashley Cowburn has more:
At-risk Israeli adults to be offered third Covid jabs
Israel said on Sunday it will begin offering a third dose of Pfizer’s vaccine to adults with weak immune systems, but it was still weighing whether to make the booster available to the general public.
The rapid spread of the Delta variant has sent vaccination rates in Israel back up as new infections have risen over the past month from single digits to around 450 a day, and the country has moved to fast-track its next Pfizer shipment.
Health minister Nitzan Horowitz said that effective immediately, adults with impaired immune systems who had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine could get a booster shot, with a decision pending on wider distribution.
Pfizer and partner BioNTech SE, the main suppliers in a swift Israeli vaccination rollout that began in December, said on Thursday they will ask US and European regulators within weeks to authorise booster shots.
The two companies cited an increased risk of infection after six months in seeking permission for a third shot.
“We are examining this issue and we still do not have a final answer,” Mr Horowitz, speaking on Kan public radio, said about a booster for the general population in Israel. “In any case we are administering as of now a third shot to people suffering from immunodeficiency.”
PHE accused of misleading cancer patients over Covid jab
Public Health England (PHE) has been accused by a cancer charity of making “misleading” claims about the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines for some people with weakened immune systems.
Blood Cancer UK’s chief executive, Gemma Peters, said she was “deeply concerned” with a PHE statement published this week that made “generalised conclusions” about the levels of protection at-risk groups can expect after receiving jabs.
A PHE press statement published on Friday said the vaccines offered “high levels” of protection for most people with underlying health conditions. It cited study data from more than one million people in at-risk groups that showed overall vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease was around 60 per cent after one dose of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer jabs, reports Leonie Chao-Fong.
Belgian woman first to die after contracting two Covid variants at once
Over to Belgian. A 90-year-old Belgian woman who died from coronavirus in March had contracted two variants of the disease at the same time, which is believed to be the first documented case of its kind, a scientific congress and Belgian media said on Sunday.
The woman became sick with Alpha and Beta types first identified in Britain and South Africa and her doctors said she could have contracted the infections from two different people.
Discussed at this year’s European Congress on Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), the case proves it is possible to catch two Covid-19 variants simultaneously.
The woman, who was treated at a hospital in Aalst near Brussels, had not been vaccinated, Belgium’s Dutch-language public broadcaster VRT said. Belgium, like much of the European Union, faced vaccine delivery problems early in 2021 and its vaccination programme started slowly, although the EU has now delivered vaccines to cover 70 per cent of the population.
“It is probable that this woman was infected by two different people with two variants of the virus. Unfortunately, we do not know how this infection happened,” molecular biologist Anne Vankeerberghen of the OLV hospital, in Aalst, said on VRT’s website.
