Here are the latest developments in the fight against Covid:

  • A further 537 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 74,786, NHS England said on Friday. Patients were aged between 15 and 100. All except 21, aged between 45 and 98, had known underlying health conditions. The deaths were between December 17 and February 4, with the majority being on or after February 1. There were 44 other deaths reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
  • A total of 9,899,043 Covid-19 vaccinations had taken place in England between December 8 and February 4, according to provisional NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 391,037 on the previous day’s figures.
  • The pre-print from Oxford, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, found that vaccine efficacy against symptomatic positive infection was similar for the new UK variant and the previous strain. The Oxford team said researchers in South Africa were still looking at how effective the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is against the strain first detected there, and also being spread in the UK. Details of these studies will be published in due course. Mene Pangalos, executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca, said it would not be surprising to see reduced efficacy against this variant.
  • Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said having coronavirus immunity passports was a “very sensible policy” and that other countries had shown how such schemes can work.
  • Thousands of hotel rooms near airports are being booked by the Government as part of new quarantine rules for international arrivals. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it is working “at pace to secure the facilities we need”. The requirement for travellers returning to the UK from “red list” countries to self-isolate in a Government-approved hotel for 10 days will be implemented from February 15.
  • All adults aged 50 and over should receive a coronavirus vaccine by May, Downing Street has confirmed. Ministers have previously refused to give a firm date, saying only that the “ambition” was to vaccinate the first nine priority groups “by the spring”. However, amid signs of confusion in Whitehall, the Cabinet Office issued a press notice on Friday morning stating the UK vaccination programme planned to reach all nine priority groups by May. It said the rollout of the programme meant that local elections could go ahead in England and Wales on May 6 as planned.
  • The Government must take urgent action to tackle violence and abuse towards shopworkers, more than 65 retail leaders have demanded. In a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, bosses from high street names including Aldi, McDonald’s, Boots and the Post Office, said stronger laws were needed to protect against shopworker abuse. It comes after recent data found an increase in the verbal abuse of staff at “essential” retailers, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
  • The Prime Minister has urged the public to continue following the rules despite successes with the vaccine rollout. Posting a video on Twitter, Boris Johnson said on February 22 he would “set out the beginnings of our roadmap for a way forward for the whole country as the vaccine programme intensifies and, as more and more people acquire immunity, a steady programme for beginning to unlock.” He added: “I want to stress that it is still early days and we have rates of infection in this country (that are) still very, very high and (have) more people – almost twice as many people – in our hospitals with Covid now than there were back at the peak in April."
  • There were a further 965 confirmed coronavirus cases from our part of the North-East and North Yorkshire on Friday compared to the previous day. 

    Here's a breakdown by area of the number of cases in our region: County Durham: 33,504 was 33,345; Darlington: 6,330 was 6,289; Gateshead: 12,353 was 12,301; Hartlepool: 7,820 was 7,802; Middlesbrough: 10,621 was 10,530; Newcastle: 21,315 was 21,244; North Tyneside: 10,699 was 10,661; North Yorkshire: 26,326 was 26,191; Redcar and Cleveland: 8,180 was 8,138; South Tyneside: 10,128 was 10,095; Stockton: 13,581 was 13,486; Sunderland: 19,243 was 19,108; York: 11,306 was 11,251