Covid UK news live: Latest vaccine updates as care home target hit

Birmingham City Council’s director of public health Dr Justin Varney said there will be other cases of the South African variant in the region.

After reports of a single positive test for the variant within the Black Country were confirmed, Dr Varney said: “Walsall is the first, there will be others in the West Midlands I’m sure.”

In a plea to faith leaders to help support enhanced testing efforts in the region, he added: “Please step up, please help us get those communities – there will be specific geographical areas – where we are asking everyone to test over a week.

“The ask for you as leaders in your communities is encourage people to do that.”

Walsall Council has unveiled plans to test an extra 10,000 residents with no Covid-19 symptoms in response to the discovery of a local case of the South African variant.

Councillor Stephen Craddock, Walsall’s portfolio holder for health and wellbeing, said: “Our priority remains very much to keep our communities, and particularly our most vulnerable residents, safe.

“We are aiming to test an additional 10,000 residents without symptoms of Covid-19 in the next few weeks to assess containment of this variant.

“If you are asked to be tested, please do take up the offer. It’s quick, easy and painless and, put simply, you could save lives by doing so.”

A total of 8,543,262 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 31 January, according to provisional NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 292,116 on the previous day’s figures.

Of this number, 8,082,355 were the first dose of the vaccine, a rise of 289,359 on the previous day’s figures, while 460,907 were the second dose, an increase of 2,757.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace has wished Captain Sir Tom Moore a “very speedy recovery” as the 100-year-old Second World War veteran, whose charity walks inspired the nation early in the pandemic, is being treated in hospital after testing positive for Covid-19.

Mr Wallace told defence questions in the House of Commons: “I’d like to take the opportunity on behalf of everyone in defence to send Captain Sir Tom Moore our best wishes for his recovery from Covid.

“He continues to be an inspiration to us all and embodying the trust, courage and team spirit – which is the motto of the Army Foundation College, in Harrogate, of which he is the honorary colonel.

“From the newest recruit upwards, we all wish him a very speedy recovery.”

Boris Johnson said repairing any damage caused to children’s education was the “biggest challenge” for the government and that he was “lost in admiration” at the efforts of parents home-schooling their children.

He told reporters in Batley, West Yorkshire: “I think this is the biggest challenge for the government at the moment, it’s not just the vaccine rollout, not just the NHS difficulties, which remain very severe, but making up that shortfall in education.

“We want to repair any damage or any loss, any detriment to kids’ education as fast as possible.”

Boris Johnson said repairing any damage caused to children’s education was the “biggest challenge” for the government and that he was “lost in admiration” at the efforts of parents home-schooling their children.

He told reporters in Batley, West Yorkshire: “I think this is the biggest challenge for the government at the moment, it’s not just the vaccine rollout, not just the NHS difficulties, which remain very severe, but making up that shortfall in education.

“We want to repair any damage or any loss, any detriment to kids’ education as fast as possible.”

Boris Johnson has said he is “optimistic” that people will be able to take summer holidays this year but warned it is too early to lift restrictions.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has renewed calls for the government to start vaccinating teachers and school staff once the rollout of the jab to the most vulnerable groups is complete.

Speaking during a visit to south London he said: “The reason for that is not because teachers and school staff are more at risk. It is because of the disruption that will be caused to schools if they are not vaccinated.

“What we saw in the autumn was schools being open but actually being highly disrupted because children are in one week and out the next week.

“That cannot be our ambition for March 8. So this is to make the get-back-to-school real and workable.”

Boris Johnson said he had not taken a decision on whether there would be a return to the tier system following the lockdown, and a national approach was an option.

He told reporters: “It may be that a national approach, going down the tiers in a national way, might be better this time round, given that the disease is behaving much more nationally.

“If you look at the way the new variant has taken off across the country, it’s a pretty national phenomenon.

“The charts I see, we’re all sort of moving pretty much in the same sort of way, I mean there are a few discrepancies, a few differences, so it may be that we will go for a national approach but there may be an advantage still in some regional differentiation as well. I’m keeping an open mind on that.”

The director of public health for Hertfordshire has said they would be starting door-to-door testing this week after one case of the South African variant was found in the county.

Professor Jim McManus said the number of cases that had been detected across the country which were not linked to travel was still relatively small.

“We are talking less than 30, less than 20. It is not a massive number,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One programme.

“We should bear in mind this was picked up by routine surveillance testing which is the reason why we are about to embark on this exercise so that we can find any more cases that are out there.”