Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Britain was last week presented with two differing pictures of Covid-19’s spread across the country. Together they suggest infections have reached record levels since the pandemic began but have also raised hopes that the current high wave of cases across the UK may have peaked.
The first study is based on a random survey of households that showed about 1.28 million people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were infected with Covid-19 for the week ending 22 October, the highest number of infections to be recorded since the pandemic began in the UK. Carried out by the Office for National Statistics, this weekly survey is rated as the most reliable measure of British infection levels.
Life expectancy for men in the UK has fallen for the first time since current records began 40 years ago because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, figures show.
A boy born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79 years old, down from 79.2 for the period of 2015-17, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
House asking prices have hit record levels across every region of Great Britain, according to latest figures, although some experts have questioned whether the pandemic boom is finally starting to wane.
The price of properties coming to market rose by 0.8% month on month in June to a third consecutive record of £336,073, according to data from Rightmove, a property listings website.
More than a million people in the UK were experiencing “long Covid” in a recent four-week period, according to new survey figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Statisticians estimate that 1.1 million people in the community had ongoing symptoms in the four weeks up to 6 March after contracting the disease at least three months beforehand.
Half of people in the UK now have antibodies against coronavirus, either through infection or vaccination, tests conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.
According to the most recent coronavirus infection survey, an estimated 54.7% of the population in England would have tested positive for antibodies to coronavirus from a blood sample in the week ending 14 March 2021.
The army’s increased deployability and technological advantage will mean that greater effect can be delivered by fewer people. I’ve therefore taken the decision to reduce the size of the army from today’s current strength of 76,500 trade trained personnel to 72,500 by 2025.
The army has not been at its established strength of 82,000 since the middle of last decade.
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said that Nicola Sturgeon is not “free and clear”, despite being exonerated by the independent adviser on the ministerial code, because the Scottish parliament’s committee has not yet published its report on her. In a statement he said:
The first minister has been given a pass because it has been judged her ‘failure of recollection’ was ‘not deliberate’.
I respect Mr Hamilton and his judgment but we cannot agree with that assessment. Nicola Sturgeon did not suddenly turn forgetful.
A quick glance at the government’s coronavirus dashboard might be fuel for optimism. But new data suggests the picture may not be so rosy.
According to the dashboard, the number of people testing positive for Covid is falling: 37,892 positive tests were reported on Thursday, compared with 62,322 on 6 January. Cases by specimen date show similar trends.
The Covid-19 pandemic has cut life expectancy in England and Wales by roughly a year, scientists have estimated, reversing gains made since 2010.
A study, conducted by Oxford researchers, found that life expectancy at birth (LEB) had fallen by 0.9 and 1.2 years for females and males relative to 2019 levels respectively.
The UK’s Covid-19 death toll has surpassed 50,000, government figures have revealed, as the nation struggles to deal with a deadly second wave.
The news served as a sobering reminder of the severity of the crisis after hopes were raised on Monday that an end may be in sight with announcement that a vaccine had been shown to be effective.
From my colleagues Pamela Duncan and Niamh McIntyre
From tonight over half the population of England will be living in areas classed as “high risk” or “very high risk” under the government’s three-tier system, equivalent to 28.4m people.
All of Lancashire county (Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool council areas) are to move from tier 2 to the higher tier 3 category from midnight, meaning more than 3m people are now living in the highest-risk areas.
Trade negotiations often involve threats to walk away, and dire forecasts, before both side agree to compromise, and Brexit-watchers have been waiting for the UK-EU trade talks to this moment. It came this morning, when Boris Johnson used a TV statement (see 12.29pm) to say that there would no deal without a “fundamental change” in the EU’s approach.
But threats only work if people take them seriously and Johnson’s comments do not seem to have been taken as a sincere statement of intent to talk away. It was telling that, despite being asked twice if he was saying the talks were over, he would not use those words. (See 12.41pm.) If the foreign exchange markets thought Johnson was abandoning hopes of a deal, the pound would have fallen (as it has repeatedly in key moments in the Brexit drama since 2016). But it didn’t. “Market participants see comments from Boris Johnson as mainly political posturing at this stage,” an analyst told Bloomberg.
There’s no point in trade talks if the EU doesn’t change its position. The EU effectively ended the trade talks yesterday.
Only if the EU fundamentally changes its position will it be worth talking.
What I would say to that is there is only any point in Michel Barnier coming to London next week if he’s prepared to discuss all of the issues on the basis of legal text in an accelerated way without the UK being required to make all of the moves, or if he’s willing to discuss practicalities of areas such as travel and haulage which the PM mentioned in his statement.
Our position is a clear one. Only if the EU fundamentally changes position will it be worthwhile talking.
People of black and South Asian ethnic background have a greater risk of death from Covid than white people, figures have confirmed, revealing such differences are not driven by pre-existing health conditions, but largely down to factors such as living arrangements and jobs.
The Department for Education’s latest school attendance statistics show an increase in the number of state schools in England partially closed because of Covid-19.
More than one in five state secondaries reported being partially closed, meaning that classes or year groups were sent home or were isolating. Previously 82% were classed as “fully open” but last week the proportion fell to 79%.
Attendance in fully open primary schools is now consistent with what we would have expected before coronavirus. Across all state schools, only a small minority of pupils are self-isolating and schools are providing remote education, in line with what pupils would be receiving in school.
We will continue to work with schools to ensure all appropriate steps are taken to keep pupils and staff safe.
A pilot scheme will be launched “shortly” in England which will involve relatives of care home residents being treated as key workers to enable safe visits, Helen Whately, the care minister, has said.
Giving evidence to the joint science and health committee hearing on coronavirus, she said she wanted to enable visiting “but it must be safe”.
Almost nine in 10 pupils have attended schools in England since their full reopening this month, government figures show. Around 92% of state schools were fully open on Thursday September 10, and approximately 88% of students were back in class on the same day, the Department for Education analysis suggests.
There have been a further 110 cases of Covid-19 in Wales, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 19,681. Public Health Wales said no further deaths had been reported, with the total number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic remaining at 1,597.
Britain has entered the deepest recession since records began as official figures on Wednesday showed the economy shrank by more than any other major nation during the coronavirus outbreak in the three months to June.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the second quarter by 20.4% compared with the previous three months – the biggest quarterly decline since comparable records began in 1955.
Official measure to be declared this week as coronavirus lockdown shrinks GDP by 21% in second quarter
Britain’s economy will be officially declared in recession this week for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, as the coronavirus outbreak plunges the country into the deepest slump on record.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday are expected to show that gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the three months to June by 21%.
Matt Hancock has announced an urgent review into how Public Health England (PHE) counts Covid-19 deaths after discovering what appeared to be a serious issue in how rates are calculated.
Following the health secretary’s move on Friday, Yoon K Loke and Carl Heneghan, of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, wrote in a blogpost: “It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community.”
The Department of Health and Social Care has recorded a further 155 deaths in the UK in its latest daily update on coronavirus. That takes the official UK death total to 44,391.
As we try to point out every day, this official headline total used by the government is not the actual total. That is because these figures only include people who tested positive for coronavirus and died. Taking into account the deaths of people who did not have a test, but where coronavirus was cited on the death certificate, the real total is more than 55,000.
The Welsh health minister has expressed concern that workers at a food factory where there has been an outbreak of Covid-19 might be spreading the virus because they take it turns to use the same bed.
Speaking at the Welsh government’s daily briefing, Vaughan Gething said there had been a suggestion that workers were coming off shift and jumping into a bed just vacated by a housemate who then went off to work.
I’m genuinely concerned about the conditions that people live within, not just in houses of multiple occupation where people may share bathroom and toilet facilities or kitchens, and the opportunity for contact indoors and surfaces is an obvious concern. You’ve heard that from our scientists, and others.
But in particular, if there is reality to the suggestion that people are sharing beds, there’s an obvious risk if people finish one shift, then return from that shift to get into a bed that someone has just got out of. So there are real issues here about accommodation and how it may be an unhelpful factor in driving transmission within that workforce.
We’re finally over the first peak of the epidemic, but the numbers relating to the virus keep on spreading. Sometimes, however, things get lost in translation from the spreadsheet to the article, broadcast or tweet.