Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

21 October 2020
A series of daily updates for CHO members regarding relevant updates pertaining to Coronavirus from home and abroad.

Key Announcements:
• Yesterday there were 21,331 new cases of Covid-19 and 241 deaths.
• The PM held a press conference yesterday evening, announcing that Greater Manchester would be mov ed into Tier 3 restrictions after talks failed to reach a deal with local authorities – he said the restrictions would come into force just after midnight on 23 October, and the area would receive £ 22 m in financial support.
• Sheffield City Region Mayor, Dan Jarvis, has confirmed to local MPs this morning that South Yorkshire will move into Tier 3 from Saturday – this comes after talks with Government concluded in a deal featuring £30m in business support.
• The Treasury have announced that the Spending Review will conclude in November, and will be a one-year review in order to “prioritise the response to Covid-19, and [their] focus on supporting jobs”.
• Jonathan Van-Tam, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, has said that a national circuit-breaker lockdown would be “difficult to justify” for low infection areas.
• A new study from King’s College London suggests factors including age, weight and gender can increase the risk of “long Covid”.
• Inflation rose last month as the Eat Out to Help Out scheme ended. In addition, Government borrowing rose to £36bn in September.

Regional/Devolved
• Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and other local leaders want at least £65m in support as the region becomes the first to be forced into Tier 3 restrictions.
• Yesterday, Wales went into its “firebreak” lockdown across the nation for two weeks, with Welsh ministers also saying they will not rule out another firebreak in early 2021.

International
• Australia may have recorded its first case of Covid-19 reinfection – a rarity with only six cases reported among the 40m worldwide, including in the US and Hong Kong.
• Argentina has become the fifth country in the world to record 1m confirmed Covid-19 cases – the smallest country to do so to date, following the US, India Brazil and Russia.
• Brazil has agreed to buy 46m doses of the Chinese-made vaccine CoronaVac as part of its national immunisation programme.

Stakeholders
• The joint inquiry between the Science & Technology Committee and the Health & Social Care Committee on ‘Coronavirus: lessons learnt’ will hold its second oral evidence session this morning
• Former head of the Civil Service, Mark Sedwell, has said the UK didn’t have the “exact measures” in place to deal with Covid, and that Cummings’ journey to Co. Durham during lockdown had been a mistake.
• The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said the latest ONS figures shows that Covid-19 will bring forwards the date when “the pensions triple lock is unpicked”.