Here are the latest updates from the last 24 hours.

 

  • A further 890 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in the North-East and North Yorkshire. The figures, released this afternoon, show another 15.871 people across the country have tested positive for the virus. Meanwhile, across the UK a further 479 deaths were confirmed within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test. There are currently 15,712 patients in hospitals in the UK being treated with the virus.  Yesterday, NHS England announced that a further 25 people have died in hospitals in the North-East and North Yorkshire.

 

  • Prime Minister Boris Johnson has written to Conservative MPs offering them a second vote on the coronavirus tier system early next year as he seeks to head off a backbench rebellion in the Commons this week. The Prime Minister has angered some of his party with a plan to impose stringent restrictions across much of England when the national lockdown ends on Wednesday, and could struggle to get the measures through Parliament on Tuesday. Last night he said the regulations would contain a sunset clause of February 3, with MPs offered the chance to vote to extend Local areas’ tiers will be reviewed every fortnight.

 

  • Professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling led to the original lockdown in March, said “individual judgment” is important when deciding whether to see elderly relatives over Christmas. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that mixing at Christmas will “increase transmission compared with everyone staying at home not mixing at all”. He added that asymptomatic cases appear to be only a quarter as infectious, but stressed that people should isolate if they have a “hint” of feeling ill.

 

  • Every hospital in England could be overwhelmed with coronavirus cases if new tier restrictions are not introduced, Michael Gove has warned, as he seeks to quell a Tory backbench rebellion over the measures. The Cabinet Office Minister urged MPs to “take responsibility for difficult decisions” to curb the spread of Covid-19, amid anger from some Conservatives that much of England will face stringent restrictions. Only the Isle of Wight, Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly will be under the lightest Tier 1 controls, while all of the North-East is in the most restrictive Tier 3. In total, 99 per cent of England will enter Tier 2 or 3, with tight restrictions on bars and restaurants and a ban on households mixing indoors when the four-week national lockdown lifts on Wednesday.

 

  • Labour has warned that parts of England under the most stringent coronavirus restrictions will be stretched to “breaking point” without the support of a key business grant. Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds is set to urge her opposite number Rishi Sunak to bring forward additional help and will suggest the Government extends its Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) in Tier 3 areas. ARG funding was given to local authorities when they entered Tier 3 under the first regionalised lockdown restrictions, and was available to all other areas when England entered a national lockdown last month. The Chancellor has not announced an extension of the scheme ahead of the reintroduction of the tier system next week, and Labour is warning that it will force some local authorities to stretch the grants further than others.

 

  • People at very high risk from coronavirus, who were made to shield during the pandemic, have been given the same priority as the over 70s in the queue to receive a vaccine. The provisional vaccine priority list published by Public Health England has placed people aged 18 or older who are deemed clinically extremely vulnerable in the same priority group as those aged 70 and over. It means people with conditions such as blood, bone or lung cancer, chronic kidney disease and Down’s Syndrome have been placed in priority group four of nine.