As it happened: Hancock hails 'seriously encouraging' vaccine news

Here is a brief round-up of the main developments today.

• Health Secretary Matt Hancock has hailed new data which shows a single shot of either of the two main vaccines in use in the UK cuts hospitalisations by 80%.
• PM Boris Johnson has defended the government's measures to prevent new coronavirus variants being imported into the UK as health officials in England seek one individual who tested positive for the Brazil variant - but did not give their details.
• School staff do not have a markedly higher risk of infection than other working-age adults, a study suggests.
• Twenty-four African countries will soon receive Covid-19 vaccines from the UN-backed Covax programme, with Kenya and Nigeria due to receive the vaccines on Tuesday.
• About 26,000 police officers and 3,800 soldiers have been deployed in the Czech Republic to enforce new lockdown measures. The country is currently seeing the worst Covid surge in the world, with the highest per capita infection rate over the last week.

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During the coronavirus lockdowns last year, fitness apps such as Strava and Freeletics recorded an increase in people using them.

But how should you get started? And what are some of the things you need to focus on?

Radio 1 Newsbeat has been chatting to personal trainer Cara Meehan on the dos and don'ts of joining the world of runners.

Her tips include to start slowly, fuel yourself properly and remember those all-important stretches.

Read more here.

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The chair of the Transport Select Committee believes the introduction of vaccine passports is "inevitable" in light of the European Commission's announcement of an equivalent scheme.

"It just makes sense now to make sure it's workable and will include everything that's needed to give people confidence to fly again," Conservative MP Hugh Merriman told Radio 4's PM.

He added that he hoped the UK would not "tag along" to the EU scheme but "play a really big lead".

"We can do that because our vaccine programme puts us further ahead, so we should be right at the start of this exercise, along with the likes of Israel."

He said the goal was to end up with a standardised app "that is recognised by all."

He added that he was "frustrated" by recent images of long queues of passengers at Border Control at Heathrow airport and he had raised the issue of Border Control staff last year and been given assurances.

"If we start to increase the numbers who can fly, once the vaccination programme is rolled out, then we've got to make sure we get it right.

"That means staff at the airports and the apps we've been talking about."

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Earlier former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the discovery of six cases of the Brazilian P1 variant of the coronavirus in the UK showed the need for tighter controls.

"Absolutely we have got to look at what has gone wrong," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One programme.

"It shows that it needs to be tightened up still further because if we are going to protect the road map out of lockdown then the name of the game is going to be stop new variants coming in, some of which may end up being immune to the new vaccines," he says.

"Where we need to get to is a much, much more thorough combination of test and trace and genetic sequencing so we are not just testing the people who have been near someone who tested positive, but we also are working out where the original infection happened and which variant it is. You can only do that if you bring the cases right down."

However, Hunt - who now chairs the Commons Health and Social Care Committee - says the country was in a much better situation than it was last year.

"The fact that we are going to this trouble over one person who has gone missing says to me that we are in much better shape than we were three months ago, six months ago, where we wouldn't have been anywhere near that," he says.

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Israel's Supreme Court has banned the government from tracking the mobile phones of coronavirus carriers.

The technology, developed by counter-terrorism agency Shin Bet, has been used on and off since March 2020 as part of efforts to curb the spread of the virus. It uses the locations of people with Covid to track others they have come into contact with.

In its ruling today, the Supreme Court said it feared the surveillance technology - which was initially imposed as an emergency measure - is gradually becoming permanent, and that the government is heading down a "slippery slope of using extreme and undemocratic means in the fight against the epidemic".

Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch later tweeted that the ruling was "a crime against the health of Israeli citizens".

The government now has two weeks to stop using the technology.

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England's deputy chief medical officer said the latest scientific data had "vindicated" the UK's decision to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to older people.

Some countries, such as Germany and France, have refused to administer the vaccine to the over-65s because of a lack of testing data on older age groups.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation "took a view that it almost certainly would work", after agreeing it was "not immunologically plausible" the vaccine would be effective among younger people but not older ones.

"The PHE (Public Health England) data have clearly vindicated that approach today," he said.

"I am not here to criticise other countries, but to say that I think in time the data emerging from our programme will speak for itself and other countries will doubtless be very interested in it."

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Officials in Japan have asked China to stop carrying out anal swab tests on Japanese citizens who enter the country, saying people have complained that it caused them "psychological distress".

China started carrying out anal swabs for Covid in January. The tests involve inserting a cotton swab 3-5cm (1.2-2.0 inches) into the anus and gently rotating it.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said they made the request through the embassy in Beijing, and noted that the use of anal swabs "has not been confirmed anywhere else in the world".

China has yet to respond to the request, he added.

Last week, Chinese officials denied that they had made US diplomats undergo anal testing after US media reported that some had complained about the procedure.

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The health secretary hailed new data highlighting the ability of the Covid vaccines to reduce serious illness - and fielded questions about the ongoing search for a missing case of the Brazil variant in the UK.

• Matt Hancock gave us news of recent data from Public Health England which shows a single shot of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid jab reduces the chance of needing hospital treatment by more than 80%.
• Mr Hancock said findings from the data - based on those over 80 who tested positive for Covid in hospital - were "very strong" and called the data "seriously encouraging".
• The search for the one person in the UK who has tested positive for the Brazil variant continues, with Mr Hancock urging anyone who took a test on 12 or 13 February but hasn't got their result back to call Public Health England.
• He denies that quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK were brought in too late and said the system in place at the time had contained the spread.
• The roadmap will continue as planned, despite the presence of the Brazil variant in the UK, with Mr Hancock saying schools reopening on 8 March was "right thing to do"
• Discussions continue with the EU and several other countries about the idea of 'vaccine passports' to enable international travel once again.

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About 26,000 police officers and 3,800 soldiers have been deployed in the Czech Republic to enforce new lockdown measures.

The country is currently seeing the worst Covid surge in the world, with the highest per capita infection rate over the last week.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis has warned that the healthcare system could collapse without the new lockdown restrictions, as a record number of Covid patients in the country are in a serious condition.

Under the new rules, which are in place for three weeks, people are being confined to their home districts, and the two school year groups that were still attending in-person classes - pre-school and second grade - are switching to home learning.

However, people who need to travel for work are exempt from the travel restrictions. Factories are also still open - a decision that Babis has faced criticism for.

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More than 20 million people in the UK have now had their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

But vaccine hesitancy is still a big issue in some communities.

In the over 80s, 93% of white people have had the jab, compared to 76% of South Asian people and 61% of black people.

GP Farzana Hussain told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Naga Munchetty that "for black Africans and Afro-Carribeans, it does seem to be a historical mistrust in the system".

"For South Asians...there's a lot of myths around the vaccine containing animal products which doesn't help them if they want to comply with their faith, and also a real myth about infertility. Both of which are of course completely untrue," she said.

Ima Miah is the CEO of the misinformation-tackling Asian Resource Centre (ARC) in Croydon. She told Naga that they’ve had to work hard to bust myths about the virus.

"There were myths around: Why did this happen? Where did this virus come from? Was it something intentional? Was it something targeted at the BAME people? Was it something to get rid of old people because they didn't matter?" she said.

Ima added that the distrust is stronger in certain communities because of the “disproportionate impact on BAME communities in the first place".

Listen to 5 Live on the free BBC Sounds app.

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Polish President Andrzej Duda has spoken with Chinese leader Xi Jinping about possibly purchasing China's Covid-19 vaccines, his aide has told state news agency PAP, despite them not yet being approved by the European Medical Agency (EMA).

"The president also raised the issue of Polish-Chinese cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, including the possibility of purchasing vaccines produced in China," aide Krzysztof Szczerski told the agency.

Poland wouldn't be the first EU nation to buy Chinese vaccines before they're given EU approval.

Last week, Hungary became the first country in the union to start using vaccines produced by Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm.

Hungary also gave emergency approval to Russia's Sputnik V vaccine in January, and has already rolled it out - despite it not being approved by the EMA either.

The EU has been criticised for the slow pace of vaccinations in its member states.

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There's been lots of talk today about the P1 Brazil variant after six cases were found in the UK.

There have been concerns vaccines may not be as effective against this variant, but NHS England's Prof Stephen Powis said vaccines could be "rapidly adapted".

Understanding how new variants of the coronavirus in Brazil, South Africa and the UK are altering the behaviour of the virus will be crucial in our vaccine arms race against Covid-19.

This is how new Covid-19 variants are changing the pandemic.

Asked which step in the roadmap he is most concerned about, as children return to school on Monday, the health secretary says it's all about "safe steps".

"We have set out the tests precisely so we can be sure the data still allows for safe steps down the roadmap."

He adds he is "highly confident" the opening of schools on 8 March is "the right thing to do".

Dr Hopkins says the slow strategy - and the five-week gaps between each measure - are needed "to give time after each event to monitor the impact" particularly on hospitalisations and deaths.

Professor Van-Tam joins her in stating the importance of having time "to consider the effect of each step before we move on".

He stresses the need to relax measures "in a very long-term way."

He says instead of "stuttering steps... I would rather take much slower, more pronounced steps that always go in one direction."

Jill Lawless from Associated Press asks what Matt Hancock thinks of the digital "green pass" the EU is proposing to prove Covid-free travel and which steps of the roadmap he is most concerned about.

Hancock says: "This already exists because you need to have a test before you can travel to the UK...and the EU proposal is that certification includes whether you've had the vaccine and whether you've recently had the test. Therefore it's something that we are working with them and others on and it matters that we get the details of this right for international travel."

He says: "The roadmap is designed to be able to see the data before we take each step and we've done it that way in order to be able to have the assurance that we are taking a cautious but irreversible path out of this pandemic."

Macer Hall from the Express asks if "double masking" is a good idea. He also asks how the UK will ensure people get the second vaccine dose.

"The more layers you have the better," replies Dr Hopkins, adding that the recommendation is for "at least two layers and ideally three in a mask".

On the second question, Hancock says he hasn't seen reticence among the population to get their second jab.

Prof Van-Tam emphasises the importance of getting the second dose saying there is a "significant likelihood that a second dose will mature your immune response possibly make it broader, and almost certainly make it longer than just having a first dose".

Thomas Moore at Sky says there is a missing case of the P1 variant but we do not know who or where or whether they've self-isolated. He asks how such a concerning new variant has been allowed to slip through the net?

He also asks Prof Jonathan Van-Tam to level with him over any prospect of a holiday abroad this summer when new variants are crossing our borders and there's still no vaccine with in-built universal protection against all strains of the virus.

Matt Hancock says there's a high chance the identification of the sixth case came through the surge testing used in places where they were looking for other variants of concern.

Without this huge surveillance we wouldn't know about it and about 30% of cases are being sequenced, he says.

On holidays, Prof Van-Tam says "we are still in a zone of great uncertainty about what the virus will do next".

Many of the vaccination programmes in Europe are running behind ours and whether we can go on holiday depends on what other countries will say and do in terms of foreign tourism, he says.

"There has to be great uncertainty at the moment," he says.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said people studying the new data should see that both vaccines are "extremely effective" after one dose.

"I absolutely hope that, right round the world, people study the data and understand that getting the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab is the right thing to do - and it could save your life".

Matt Hancock has denied that delays in imposing quarantine on travellers to the UK has put people at risk.

"We had already put in place measures against people travelling from Brazil," he said, adding that the rules - self-isolating at home - had been followed by the five people detected.

And the health secretary added that there was "no evidence the sixth case did not follow those rules."

He said it showed the system that was in place had managed to control the spread so far, and he pointed to the stricter measures now in place.

Professor Van-Tam was asked what impact the new data would have on our everyday lives, but said it was "going to take time until we can apply the results in a more generalised way".

He said, ultimately, he expected vaccine to lower levels of disease across the country, to reduce the likelihood of infection among the older and more vulnerable.

He added that those given the vaccine would be less likely to suffer "severe consequences" of Covid once vaccinated.

"The ratio of mild to severe cases should increase in favour of mild cases over time."

"The problem isn't fixed yet, but we have identified how to fix it."

The next question comes from ITV's Romilly Weeks who asks if the health secretary is reconsidering reopening schools in England given the presence of the Brazil variant in the UK.

"We do not think there is a need to change approach on schools because of the new variant," replies Hancock.

"Our goal is to contain transmission to these six people," he adds.

Dr Susan Hopkins says the ONS and React studies have not found any P1 cases.

The data is "reassuring" she says but adds "we are still on guard".