UK coronavirus live: vaccine means life could ‘start to get back to normal’ after Easter, says Hancock

Micheál Martin, the Irish taoiseach (PM), told reporters this morning that he was “hopeful” that the outline of a UK-EU trade deal would emerge by the end of this week. He said:

President Ursula Von der Leyen [the European commission president] did say to the EU leaders last Thursday night that there are texts now on all areas.

I would be hopeful that by the end of this week we could see the outline of a deal. That remains to be seen. It’s down to political will. One must remain hopeful that a deal can be arrived at.

Boris Johnson will make a statement to MPs in the Commons at 3.30pm about coronavirus, and the new rules for England when the lockdown ends next week.

Downing Street has just announced he will also hold a press conference tonight, at about 7pm. Johnson will appear with Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group.

Many self-employed people are still not getting the help they need from the government’s various job support schemes, the Commons Treasury committee has said today.

In an open letter to Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, Mel Stride, chair of the Tory-dominated to the said that although the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme (CJRS) and self-employment income support scheme (SEISS) were welcome, many self-employed people were missing out. Stride urged Sunak to consider copying initiatives in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland. He said:

We note that the Scottish government has set up a newly self-employed hardship fund administered by local authorities.

In addition, the Northern Ireland executive has set up an individuals emergency resilience programme and ring-fenced some further amounts to assist individual artists/freelancers in the arts industry. It has also set up a Covid restrictions business support scheme. This scheme aims to help small businesses that do not have premises, such as driving instructors, mobile hairdressers, and also businesses, such as cleaners and caterers, that have not been forced to close but act as part of the supply chain to businesses forced to close.

At her news briefing Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has just said that the Scottish government will not be announcing any specific easing of coronavirus restrictions for Hogmanay (the new year). And she said she did not expect the four nations agreement for Christmas to cover Hogmanay.

“We can’t do everything,” she said, when explaining why there would not be specific concessions for Hogmanay. She acknowledged that this was particularly important holiday in Scotland. But she said Christmas was probably a more important event for families with children.

Priti Patel kept her job as home secretary last week despite No 10 publishing the findings of a review that found that her conduct as a minister had at times “amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying”, even if it were unintentional. But, according to a report in the Daily Mirror, 12 officials in the Home Office have been sacked in two years for “bullying, harassment, discrimination or offensive behaviour”.

Sturgeon says the rules for Christmas will involve “a small number of households” being able to mix for “a small number of days” over Christmas. But she says the idea of allowing four households to mix has not been discussed.

She also points out that the different nations of the UK use different definitions of households.

Sturgeon says later this week she will be announcing plans for a “slight and careful” easing of restrictions over Christmas.

The four nations have the UK have been making progress towards a common position, she says. But she says the details have yet to be finalised. She hopes to be able to announce firm conclusions later, she says.

She says public opinion is mixed on what the government should do. Although some people want the rules to be relaxed, there is also a lot of anxiety about the potential risks, she says.

She says it is “likely” that some households will be able to form larger bubbles with others over Christmas.

But she says any relaxation of Christmas comes with additional risk. “I’m afraid the virus won’t take Christmas off,” she says.

Sturgeon says, when the government sets out the rules, it will give advice on precautions to be taken too.

And she says just because people might be allowed to mix, that does not mean they have to.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is holding her daily coronavirus briefing now.

She says there have been 949 further cases. That is an increase from 844 yesterday, and 717 a week ago today.

She says there are 1,208 coronavirus patients in hospital in Scotland – an increase of 38 from yesterday. And there are 84 patients in intensive care – down 11 from yesterday.

And she says that no additional deaths were recorded yesterday, but that registration offices are closed at the weekend and so the Monday figures are always artificially low. Since Friday a further 44 deaths have been recorded, she says.

From Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser

Turning away from coronavirus for a moment, Boris Johnson and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, have written a joint letter (pdf) to ministers and heads of government departments reminding them that there is “no place for bullying” following an investigation into home secretary Priti Patel’s conduct.

In a ministerial statement, Johnson said:

This letter sets out the paramount importance of relationships of mutual trust and respect between politicians and their officials.

This includes keeping internal conversations private, feeling able to speak freely and honestly about matters of state and to speak constructively about things that are not working so that we can fix them together promptly.

I am clear that there is a particular duty on ministers and permanent secretaries to create jointly across government a culture which is professional, respectful, focused and ambitious for change and in which there is no place for bullying.

According to a story by Eleni Courea in the Times (paywall), Johnson raised Patel’s alleged bullying in cabinet yesterday, quoting Churchill. Johnson apparently referred to Clementine Churchill, who in 1940 wrote to her husband after one of his friends had complained of his “rough, sarcastic and overbearing manner”. Clementine told her husband: “You won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness.”

This is from Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser.

Executives from AstraZeneca, which has partnered with Oxford University on the coronavirus vaccine and which is in charge of production, have also been briefing journalists. Here are the key points they’ve been making.

• Pam Cheng, executive vice president of operations and information technology at AstraZeneca, said the company expected to have 40m doses of the vaccine ready for the UK by the end of March 2021. She said:

Excluding our sub licence partners, we will have approaching 200m doses of actives – the drug substance by the end of 2020 and more than 700m doses by the end of Q1 [the first quarter of 2021] globally. These actives would then be formulated and filled into vials.

For the UK, assuming conditional approval is granted, we expect to have manufactured approaching 20m doses of active, and with up to 4m doses in finished form by year-end, and significantly higher by end of Q1 at 70m doses of active form and 40m doses in finished form. We have a robust supply chain which is capable of manufacturing at scale and we can do it very quickly.

• Mene Pangalos, executive vice president for biopharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca, said the subgroup analysis – which showed 90% efficacy for a particular dose regimen – was enough to file for regulatory approval.

• Pangalos said data from the vaccine trial was already being submitted to the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for consideration.

• Pascal Soriot, chief executive officer of AstraZeneca, said even though three teams have now announced successful interim vaccine efficacy results, more vaccine would be needed. He said:

Sometimes people think it is a competition but if you add the capacity that Pfizer has announced, plus Moderna, plus our capacity, the three of us don’t even have enough vaccine production for the world.

So, there’s no competition really, we need as many as we can so we vaccinate sufficient number of people worldwide. So we stop this pandemic.

At the Oxford vaccine team briefing Prof Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the university, said scientists were “optimistic” that their vaccine would have good durability. She said:

When we did our Mers vaccine trial, that was with a single dose of a vaccine, and we did see very good, strong immune responses maintained a year after vaccination in that small clinical trial.

So, we’re optimistic we’re going to see good durability. There are grounds for believing that we will do, but we have to collect the data.