Summary Here the latest key developments at a glance: A government-backed study is being launched to determine whether people can be safely given different coronavirus vaccines for their first and second doses, with results expected “probably after the summe”, according to vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi. The UK reported 915 further deaths on Thursday, as well as 20,634 new infections, slightly up from Wednesday’s 19,202 new cases. Over the past seven days, infections in the UK have declined by 25,7%. Zahawi declined to give a date for when the first nine groups in the priority list will have received their vaccine. Previously, NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens has said the aim is for all over-50s and those at risk to be vaccinated by the end of April. Rob Paterson, chief executive of Best Western hotels, has criticised a lack of communication from the government over its plan to quarantine certain international arrivals in hotels, and said hotel bosses “to this day simply haven’t heard anything despite multiple offers”. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, will lay out the “operational plan” for hotel quarantines next week. “A significant return to normality” is on the cards once the most vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) member professor Andrew Hayward said on Thursday, but Nadhim Zahawi told the Commons that the economny would only be reopened “very gradually”. Nadhim Zahawi told the Commons the UK government, despite having pre-purchased 300m coronavirus vaccine doses, was “nowhere near having enough supply” to send vaccines to poorer countries. The Welsh health minister, Vaughan Gething, said that there cannot be a “huge splurge of reopening” in the country despite Covid-19 rates falling since before Christmas. England’s infections fell by 29% in week to 27 January, as a total of 196,257 people tested positive for Covid-19 in England at least once in that week. Case rates in England have decreased in all age groups and are currently highest in those aged 30-39 years old, according to Public Health England. Around one in 10 major hospital trusts in England had no spare adult critical care beds last week, according to NHS England figures. A mutation of coronavirus initially detected in Liverpool has been found in Preston and West Lancashire, local health officials said on Thursday. That’s everything from me, this blog will close shortly. Thanks for following along and writing in. Labour’s Yvette Cooper has written an article for PoliticsHome on why she believes the government’s border policy isn’t working in its current form. She writes: For a start, we cannot afford more delays. Pre-travel tests are finally in place but that didn’t happen until four weeks after the South Africa variant was discovered and many months after other countries did the same. There is still no timetable for quarantine hotels, and major hotel chains say they haven’t yet been contacted. That means that months after risky new variants were identified, people can still travel home on indirect flights from South Africa or Brazil, not be tested on arrival at Heathrow and head straight onto the tube. [...] Even once quarantine hotels are in place, they won’t cover the vast majority of passengers and the system for everyone else is still too weak. No one is tested on arrival even though passengers could have been on long, crowded journeys to the airport or in busy departure halls since their last test was done. And everyone can go straight onto public transport home - getting onto the tube, bus or train with key workers. Last week, Cooper questioned Priti Patel in the Commons over the government’s plans to tighten the borders to curb cases, and pressed the home secretary on “crowded scenes at Heathrow on Friday at the UK border—the very opposite of quarantine”. Patel responded: “[Cooper] asked, rightly, about the scenes at Heathrow airport at the weekend, and the fact is that those queues materialised because of the compliance checks that Border Force had put in place.” Government data up to 3 February shows that of the 10,992,444 jabs given in the UK so far, 10,490,487 were first doses - a rise of 469,016 on the previous day’s figures. Some 501,957 were second doses, an increase of 2,995 on figures released the previous day, PA Media reports. The seven-day rolling average of first doses given in the UK is now 430,532. Based on the latest figures, an average of 409,956 first doses of vaccine would be needed each day in order to meet the government’s target of 15 million first doses by 15 February. Liverpool virus mutation found in Preston and West Lancashire A mutation of coronavirus initially detected in Liverpool has been found in Preston and West Lancashire, say local health officials. People living in those areas are being urged to take a Covid-19 test if they are feeling unwell, with symptoms including a cold, mild flu and headaches. Dr Sakthi Karunanithi, director of public health and wellbeing at Lancashire county council, said: If you live in Preston or West Lancashire and you’re feeling under the weather, please get a Covid test. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the three classic symptoms of a fever, loss of taste or smell, or a cough - even a headache could be an indication you may have this mutation. Understandably, some residents may be concerned but all viruses mutate over time so this should not cause any further alarm. Alongside our partners, please rest assured that we are monitoring the situation closely. It is important to stress that there is currently no evidence that this mutation alone causes more severe illness or is more transmissible. On Tuesday, health secretary Matt Hancock had said there had been 11 cases of “mutations of concern” in Bristol and 32 in Liverpool, and that both cities had been added to areas that will see large amounts of community testing. A further 10 people with Covid-19 have died in Northern Ireland. Another 412 positive cases of the virus were also notified by the Department of Health on Wednesday. There are 671 Covid-positive inpatients in hospital, 68 of whom are in intensive care. First minister Arlene Foster said the current lockdown had made a “major difference” in efforts to suppress the virus. “In real terms, this means that many thousands of people have been protected from this deadly virus, some of whom would have not survived contact,” she said. UK reports 915 further deaths and 20,634 new infections The UK reported 915 further deaths on Thursday, as well as 20,634 new infections, slightly up from Wednesday’s 19,202 new cases. Over the past seven days, infections in the UK have declined by 25,7%. On Wednesday, 1,322 deaths had been reported. The official death toll now stands at 110,250. The government said on Thursday a further 2,365 people had been admitted to hospital, compared with yesterday’s 2,651. The UK’s vaccination programme will help the economy bounce back sharply later this year towards levels seen before the crisis, the Bank of England boss, Andrew Bailey, said on Thursday. The Bank’s governor said the rapid rollout of the programme would help the economy recover from the start of the summer as it allows restrictions to be lifted and gives Britons more confidence to spend. But the Bank also warned the third national lockdown in England would send the gross domestic product (GDP) tumbling by more than 4% at the start of this year. Bailey said: The MPC’s central forecast assumes that Covid-related restrictions and people’s health concerns weigh on activity in the near term, but that the vaccination programme leads to those easing, such that GDP is projected to recover strongly from the second quarter of 2021, towards pre-Covid levels. London is the region with the highest proportion of people aged 70 to 74 to have had their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to additional figures from NHS England. An estimated 61.1% of people in the capital in that age group had received their first jab by 31 January, compared with 24.6% in south-west England and 25.6% in south-east England. Figures for the other regions are: north-west England 46.0%, eastern England 36.8%, Midlands 33.9%, north-east England/Yorkshire 29.2%. For the 75-79 age group, the estimates are: north-west England 87.9%, south-west England 84.5%, eastern England 84.3%, north-east England/Yorkshire 83.4%, Midlands 81.6%, south-east England 79.8%, London 76.2%, PA Media reports. This just in from Channel 4 News’ Alex Thomson: On Monday, NHS England said it had offered vaccines to every eligible care home with older residents, except a “small remainder”, to be confirmed by official figures later that day, PA reports. Downing Street also said all eligible care home staff had been offered a coronavirus vaccine and that figures expected on Monday would confirm this. According to NHS England figures, 99% of all care homes have been visited by vaccination teams, but only 90.0% of eligible care home residents have had the vaccine. Earlier on Thursday, on Good Morning Scotland, the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said 91% of eligible residents had been given the vaccine. Asked in the Commons what percentage of all care home residents and all staff in England had received a jab, Zahawi did not give an answer. More than 100 Public Health England workers have been given a Covid jab despite not falling into any of the priority categories. The decision to vaccinate staff at PHE’s site in Porton Down, Wiltshire, has raised questions internally at the agency about how those involved were allowed to jump the queue for their first doses of the vaccine. The move has also sparked fears that it will undermine the public health message about the importance of vaccinating priority groups first – a strategy that PHE helped to draw up and promote. My colleague Matthew Weaver reports. Health secretary Matt Hancock said the UK remained on track to complete the vaccination of the top four priority groups by 15 February, with one in five of all adults now having received the jab. He told reporters on Thursday: We are on track to deliver the commitment we have made of offering the jab to all of the top four priority groups by 15 February. I’m just so proud of the team who are delivering this, it’s going really, really well. You saw yesterday 10 million jabs done. Today we passed the threshold of one in five of the population who have been jabbed already. Hancock would not confirm whether details of the government’s hotel quarantine plan would be set out next week. Asked if there would be an announcement next week, he told reporters: “Of course we’re working at pace to further strengthen the measures at the border but we’ve already put in place for isolation for everybody who arrives, wherever they come from in the world.” Hancock said he discussed the issue with Australian ministers earlier on Thursday because they already have “quarantine hotels”. “We have been working to make sure that we get this right,” he said. Hancock insisted “there isn’t a delay, what there is is work to make sure that the border is always as secure as it needs to be.” A seven-year-old with known underlying health conditions is among the latest reported deaths of people who have tested positive for coronavirus in England. The child is thought to be among the youngest to have died with the virus, PA Media reports. England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, has previously said the chances of children dying from Covid are “incredibly small” and they are less likely to get severe illness and end up in hospital due to the virus. Last year the parents of 10-year-old Fehzan Jamil, from Bradford, spoke of their “indescribable” pain following his death. The young boy, who had a number of underlying health issues, including epilepsy, died in hospital after contracting the disease and was laid to rest in November. Other young victims of the pandemic in the UK include Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, who died in March aged just 13, with no known underlying conditions. A 13-day-old baby, thought to have no underlying health conditions, was reported to have died with Covid-19 by NHS England in June. Around nine in 10 eligible residents of older adult care homes in England have had their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, NHS England said. As of the end of 31 January, 236,499 residents had received their first jab, out of 260,060 who were eligible for the vaccine - a total of 90.9%. NHS England said the number of eligible residents included a small number of residents at care homes currently undergoing an outbreak and which cannot yet be visited for vaccination, along with residents who did not receive the vaccine for valid medical reasons, and those for whom consent had not been provided. When pressed earlier in the Commons why some care homes hadn’t been visited and offered vaccines yet, the vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi didn’t give a reason. The vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has declined to say whether the government is recording data on who has refused a coronavirus vaccine. Zahawi said uptake was “incredibly high” in the UK, with 85% of adults accepting the vaccine, according to the Office for National Statistics, and the 15% skewing heavily towards black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities. PA Media reports: He acknowledged that recent research from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, which found that white people were twice as likely to have been vaccinated than black people, was “worrying”. The minister was asked three times on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if refusal rates were being tracked. He confirmed that everybody who had had the vaccine went into the national immunisation vaccination system. But he did not say this was true of those who had declined a jab, instead referring to the “high” uptake among the first four priority groups. Asked if the government should be recording this, he said: “So we absolutely will look at how we are addressing the issue of refusal rates. At the moment, this is the highest uptake of any vaccination programme, including all the flu vaccination programmes, that NHS has run. “So currently the good news is the UK is the standout country in terms of people actually wanting to keep themselves safe by being vaccinated and of course keep their families and communities safe as well.”