Markus Andrews

Omicron still poses a “serious threat” to the UK despite a “glimmer of hope” in research showing people contracting the virus are less likely to need hospital care, Dr Jenny Harries has said.The remarks from the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) follows her stark warning last week that the variant was “probably the most significant threat we’ve had since the start of the pandemic”.In findings published on Thursday, the UKHSA estimated that someone with Omicron is between 31 and 45 per cent less likely to attend A&E and 50 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital than an individual with the Delta variant.However, due to the sheer number of infections — yesterday the official data showed almost 120,000 new positive cases — it was warned a signifiant number of people could still become seriously ill and needing hospital treatment.Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether the research on hospitalisations was enough to downgrade her warning to MPs last week, she replied: “There’s a glimmer of Christmas hope in the findings we published yesterday, but it definitely isn’t yet at the point where we could downgrade that serious threat.”Emphasising the preliminary findings published by the UKHSA involved “very small numbers”, Dr Harries said: “Critically what we’re seeing is Omicron largely in younger people — it’s only just now that the cases are starting to tip into the older population, particularly the 60 and 70-year-olds.“There are a number of different reasons why we need to continue to look at this data further.”She later added: “I don’t think we do know yet this is going to be a significantly less serious disease for the population, the older population that we are normally most concerned about in relation to serious disease and death”.With Boris Johnson yet to decide whether further Covid restrictions will be needed after Christmas in England, Dr Harries also suggested that minsters might consider the wider impact of the Omicron wave — rather than just the severity of the illness.Asked whether the government will have the information needed on Monday to make key decisions, she told the BBC that ministers were being kept abreast of the latest data on a daily basis and that will continue throughout the Christmas period. More

When the seriousness of coronavirus became clear in early 2020 and work ramped up on manufacturing a vaccine, campaigners foresaw the issue of roll out inequality. Later in the year as news of vaccine efficacy dominated global headlines, they approached leaders and pharmaceutical companies to ensure low-to-middle-income countries would not be pushed out when demand for jabs peaked.“We were told which countries bought all of the vaccines in the first wave and were reassured that everyone else will get them in the next few months,” Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, told The Independent. “It’s clear that’s not happening, especially as we need boosters… what that means is that vaccine inequality is deepening with every month that goes by.”New analysis by the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA) has shown the UK, European Union and US has received more vaccines in the last six weeks than the African continent has received throughout this year. According to the data, between 11 November and 21 December wealthier countries have gotten hold of 513 million doses, while African countries have acquired only 500 million doses over 12 months.Alongside these findings, figures from Our World in Data show 448.5 million people in high-income countries have received a booster while only 53.6 million people in low-income countries have received their first dose during the same period.The majority of Covid vaccines delivered to the African continent this year have been sporadic donations often close to their expiry date. This ad hoc approach has resulted in chaos upon delivery as underequipped healthcare services struggle to administer the vaccine.“When many countries receive these donations, they are in a huge batch … when you think about how difficult it is for high-income countries to organise a roll out, you can’t just dump a load of vaccines on low-income countries and expect they are going to reach people’s arms within a few weeks. They need to be able to plan and they need investment in their health centres,” says Dearden.During a meeting of G7 leaders in Cornwall this June, a pledge was made to deliver one billion vaccines to low-income countries over the next year but already those targets are being missed. While prime minister Boris Johnson described the move as a “big step towards vaccinating the world”, the UK has only donated 15 per cent of the 100 million doses it has promised. Vaccine hesitancy across the African continent has often been an issue of concern for global leaders. However, research carried out by the Partnership for Evidence-Based Response to Covid-19 in 19 African Union member states, showed 78 per cent of people surveyed were willing to get the vaccine, should it be made available. In May, 25 per cent of adults in the European Union (EU) said they were unwilling to take any Covid vaccine. According to the PVA just 8.6 per cent of people in African countries have been fully vaccinated.“We need three things [to improve vaccine inequality]. For countries that do have access to lots of manufacturing capabilities, they need to be sharing more doses more rapidly… Secondly, we need much more money to support roll outs in countries which have weaker healthcare systems… and thirdly, we need poorer countries to have their own capabilities to manufacture vaccines. Ninety nine per cent of Africa’s vaccines are imported,” says David McNair, executive director for global policy at the ONE Campaign.Several organisations have called on vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to share their vaccine “recipe” with lower-income countries, rather than continue to make them dependent on donations, so far they have been reluctant to do so. According to the PVA, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna will make $34bn (£25bn) this year in pre-tax profits. More

A civil liberties campaign group has threatened the government with a legal challenge over the introduction of “discriminatory” Covid passes for large venues in England.It comes a week after Boris Johnson suffered the biggest rebellion of his premiership from nearly 100 Tory MPs over the certification — one of the key tenants of the government’s “plan B” strategy for dealing with the pandemic this winter.Despite the revolt, the scheme was introduced in England on 16 December, after it was passed with a majority of 243, with Labour backing the move.However, piling pressure on the prime minister to drop Covid passes, Big Brother Watch, which works to “roll back the surveillance state”, said that if Mr Johnson does not scrap the Covid passes “we will seek to make our case in court”.The group described the certification scheme, which requires members of the public to show either proof of a Covid-19 vaccination or a negative lateral flow test, as “draconian, discriminatory and pointless”.Under the the scheme, all visitors over the age of 18 entering venues such as nightclubs, dance halls and indoor events with 500 or more unseated attendees, have been required to show a Covid pass since last Wednesday.But expressing concern the documentation requirement breaches the Human Rights Act and equality laws, the civil liberties group claimed that the certification will “make society less free, less equal and less accessible for people”.Director Silkie Carlo added: “We face serious and evolving public health challenges. But Covid passes have been proven to fail in Scotland and Wales and will do nothing to protect people in England. This is safety theatre that carries real risk of harm, intrusion and division.“There are far more effective measures to keep people safe than excluding healthy people without the right papers from society”.“We urge the prime minister and health secretary to scrap mandatory Covid passes. If they don’t, we will seek to make our case in court.”In a pre-action letter, the group, which launched similar action against the Welsh government last month, claimed there was “no, or no sufficient evidence” for the introduction of Covid passes and suggested that equality considerations “do not appear to have been taken into account”.Big Brother Watch added that it will issue judicial review proceedings if it does not receive a “satisfactory” response from ministers by 6 January 2022.Speaking earlier this month, Mr Johnson said he understood the “legitimate anxieties colleagues have about restrictions on the liberty of people” when challenged by the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on the divisions within his party.However, the prime minister sought to defend the scheme, insisting the government’s approach in the face of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant was “balanced and proportionate and right”.The Independent has contacted the Department of Health and Social Care for comment. More

France will start legal action against the UK over the post-Brexit fishing row within weeks, a French minister has said. Clement Beaune, the secretary of state for European affairs, said on Thursday the case will go before a special tribunal in the “very first days of January”. It comes days after France said it would seek European Union legal action against the UK over the months-long dispute centred around the number of fishing licences granted after Brexit. Mr Beaune said last week Paris would ask the European Commission to initiate judicial proceedings “for licences we are entitled to get”. He told French media on Thursday litigation will kick off in early January. When asked on public TV station France 2 how this would work with the UK no longer being in the EU, he said there was the post-Brexit agreement. “If there are breaches of the agreement, it can lead to sanctions from a tribunal that we jointly established,” Mr Beaune said. “It will be this tribunal that we will refer to in the first days of January.”Last week, the European Affairs minister said France had obtained 93 per cent of the requested licenses to fish in UK waters. But the country still wanted just over 70 more to be granted. French fishermen staged blockades at the Port of Calais and Channel Tunnel last month as they claimed they had been “humiliated” over post-Brexit licences. Downing Street has been approached for comment. More

Boris Johnson has been “able to get away with things that mere mortals can’t”, David Cameron has claimed, as the former Conservative leader suggested the prime minister shouldn’t “bypass the media”.Mr Cameron stressed it was important for a leader to “engage and to answer questions”, claiming he had “never sought to avoid” doing “important” interviews on the Today programme and Sunday programmes.Shortly after Mr Johnson’s general election victory in 2019, the government had faced accusations of using “Trumpian” tactics for a ministerial boycott of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme while a row broke out over selective briefings.Despite No 10 press conferences becoming a key feature of the early months of the Covid crisis, in recent days the prime minister also faced criticism of failing to outline whether any further restrictions will be needed after Christmas.Mr Johnson, however, confirmed to the country the government would not introduce any stricter measures before 25 December via an update on his official social media pages — without taking questions from the media.The comments from Mr Cameron, who led the country between 2010 and 2016, also follow scrutiny earlier this over Mr Johnson’s contentious decision to employ “vanity photographers” to document events at Downing Street.Reminded of his own unsuccessful attempt to have an official photographer on the public payroll, Mr Cameron told Sky News presenter Adam Boulton: “Well, Boris has always been able to get away with things that mere mortals can’t seem to.”Appearing to take a swipe at Mr Johnson, he added: “But, look, I think you shouldn’t do this to bypass the media. You go on having… whether it is press conferences or interviews or media events — this is important,” the former prime minister said.“And I always did. Yes, the press conferences were rather infrequent, but I never held back from going on the Today programme and coming on your show (All Out Politics). I mean, we were always available and keen to engage and to answer questions”.No 10 has previously defended the taxpayer-funded staff, saying they “record the activity” of the prime minister and the cabinet and make the images available for editorial use — despite media companies paying their own photographers.Questioned on whether the prime minister should always be available to the media, the former Conservative leader replied: “Yes — look, not every day because you have got a country to run.“But I think, you know, the important interviews — whether it is the BBC Sunday morning programme or the Today programme or Sky News, TV debates — these are important, and I never sought to avoid them. More

The public already have “clarity” over new Covid restrictions to tackle the omicron variant, the health secretary has said – amid uncertainty over what will happen after Christmas.Speaking on Thursday morning Sajid Javid said there would be no further announcements on restrictions this side of the holiday – but left the door open to measures going into the New Year.Mr Javid said government scientists were not yet clear on the extent to which omicron’s less severe disease compared to earlier Covid strains would mitigate against its increased transmissibility. “We know for example, if a much smaller percentage of people are at the risk of hospitalisation if that is a smaller percentage of a much larger number, there could be still significant hospitalisation,” he told reporters. The government has been reticent to introduce further restrictions, which have been brought in in some countries on the continent.Early modelling of the new omicron variant suggested there could be a huge surge in hospitalisations, but these findings have been tempered by new studies suggesting the disease could be less severe than feared.The latest data from Imperial College suggests people with Omicron are 15-20 per cent less likely to need hospital treatment compared with the previous Delta variant – and 40-45 per cent less likely to need to stay in hospital for one night or more. The UK health security agency is expected to release further findings on Thursday regarding the severity of disease caused by omicron. Asked when there would be clarity for people’s New Year plans, Mr Javid said: “We do have clarity: the government has taken action already, so-called plan-B, people behaving sensibly and much more cautiously since they’ve learned about this variant. “And as I said, we’re getting more data all the time, we’re clear that there’s no need for any kind of further restrictions of any type of before Christmas, but of course, we will keep the situation under review.”He added: “We’re not planning any further announcements this week. Despite the caution that we’re all taking, the sensible caution, people should enjoy their Christmases with their families and friends, of course, remain cautious and we will keep the situation under review. We’re learning more all the time as we have done from this new data and we will keep analysing that data. And if we need to do anything more, we will – but nothing more is going to happen before Christmas.”On Wednesday the UK reported 13,581 more omicron cases in the latest 24 hours, taking the total to 74,089. This represents a slight fall on Tuesday, which was 15,363. More

The failure to distribute vaccines to poorer countries is a “stain on our global soul” and one of the “greatest policy failures of our times”, former prime minister Gordon Brown has warned.His intervention comes after the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that countries’ “blanket booster programmes” were likely to prolong the pandemic by diverting supplies to wealthier nations.Speaking to the BBC World Service, the former Labour prime minister said the uneven distribution of vaccines “is one of the greatest policy failures of our times” and predicted millions could die worldwide due to a lack of vaccine access.“It really is a stain on our global should and it affects us all — because I think people are beginning to realise that if we allow the disease to spread in poor countries and the virus mutates, it comes back to haunt even the fully-vaccinated,” Mr Brown said.Arguing it was an achievable task, he told the broadcaster: “We have the technology. We have the expertise and we’re producing 1.5 billion vaccines now a month. We could get them out to people and we will suffer if we don’t do this”.In a separate interview with CNN, Mr Brown, who was prime minister between 2007 and 2010, said: “We end the year with a huge pubic policy failure — a huge moral lapse on the part of the world.“Only three per cent are vaccinated in low income countries, only seven or eight per cent in Africa as a whole, and there are some countries where less than one per cent have been vaccinated.“It’s hardly surprising then that the disease spreads, that it mutates, that new variants emerge, and then these new variants as we’ve seen in the UK and around Europe and America now, this is coming back to haunt us now in the Western world.”Speaking on Wednesday, the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added that “no country could booster its way out of the pandemic” as he criticised the inequitable distribution of vaccines worldwide.“Blanket booster programmes are likely to prolong the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate,” he stressed.The organisation stressed the “global priority” must be to ensure all countries reach 40 per cent vaccine coverage “as quickly as possible and the 70 per cent target by the middle of this year”.He added: “Our projections show that supply should be sufficient to vaccinate the entire global adult population and to give boosters to high-risk populations by the first quarter of 2022.” More

Britain’s long-awaited ban on ivory sales – already delayed by three years – has been postponed by another two months.Conservationists say they are “extremely disappointed” because with every day that passes more elephants are slaughtered to meet consumer demand for trinkets made from tusks.Ministers say they need more time to fix technical details but critics argue that background work should have been done before now.Thousands of elephants are killed every year, and it’s calculated that one is killed on average every 15-25 minutes, leaving the animal at risk of extinction.The UK is the world’s largest exporter of legal ivory, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency.Research has found hundreds of ivory items are still changing hands in the UK, with ivory from newly killed animals being passed off as antique, which may be legally sold, keeping the killings going.The Ivory Act, described by ministers as “world-leading” and which bans imports, exports and sales, received royal assent three years ago last Monday.But its implementation was delayed first by a legal challenge, which was defeated, and then by a government consultation on how to enact the law, more than two years after it had been passed.Last week the European Commission announced new restrictions on the ivory trade, bringing an EU ban closer.Now, when the ban had been expected around the three-year anniversary of the Act, another delay has emerged.This time it’s down to “technical issues in developing a digital registration and certification system for dealing in exempted ivory”, according to animal welfare minister Lord Goldsmith. In a letter, seen by The Independent, he wrote: “In the Action Plan for Animal Welfare, I committed to implementing the Act by the end of this year and have said I will bring the ban into force in spring 2022.“For us to achieve this, officials have been developing a digital registration and certification system for dealing in exempted ivory.“Although significant progress has been made, there have been some technical issues in its development, and to proceed under the current timeline would risk introducing a system that does not work or is potentially not as close to the law as it needs to be to deliver one of the toughest ivory bans in the world.”Lord Goldsmith writes: “Given these risks, I have made the decision to delay implementation of the Ivory Act by two months, with the opening of the registration and certification service to deal in exempted ivory to February 2022.“This extra time will ensure that the digital service for exempted ivory is robust and meets the requirements of the Act.”He said he still planned for the ban to take effect in spring.But the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) said it was extremely disappointed and feared a watering-down of the legislation.James Sawyer, UK head of the charity, said responses to recent parliamentary questions have suggested people will be allowed to “gift, donate or bequeath items” to others.“We are concerned this will enable unscrupulous traders to take advantage and continue to buy and sell ivory,” Mr Sawyer told Lord Goldsmith.And he warned the government: “There is also continued refusal to implement a destruction or donation system for people who no longer wish to own their items of ivory and want to ensure they will not reappear on the market.”He said many people who own ivory had asked the charity to destroy their items to ensure nobody profited from them in future.This year, a 12-day research project by Ifaw discovered 913 ivory items on sale in the UK, acting as “a smokescreen” for new ivory passed off as antique.Ifaw says it has repeatedly pressed for a process for the public to donate ivory for destruction.The Independent has asked the government to respond. More