Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

12 February 2021

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

Key Announcements:

• 13,494 new cases of COVID-19 were reported yesterday and 678 people sadly lost their lives within 28 days of testing positive for the virus.
• A rheumatoid arthritis drug previously found to save lives among intensive care patients with Covid could also help those receiving oxygen on general wards and reduce pressure on the NHS, researchers have found .
• The UK’s rules on quarantine hotels for travellers arriving from Covid “red list” countries are less stringent than those enforced in Australia.
• Britain will set out its roadmap for easing lockdown restrictions on Feb 22, junior home office minister Victoria Atkins told Sky News this morning.
• The UK economy shrank by a record 9.9% last year as coronavirus restrictions hit output, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) says.
• A new booking system for England’s hotel quarantine scheme was taken offline minutes after it launched.
• The number of people waiting more than 12 months to start hospital treatment in England was 224,205 in December, NHS figures show.

Devolved

• Wales will be the first UK nation to have offered the top four priority groups a Covid jab, the Welsh Government has said.
• Scotland’s vaccination programme is likely to slow down later this month because of supply problems, the First Minister has warned .
• Stormont has opened a second Covid-19 support fund for NI taxi drivers that will cover those who were ineligible in the first round.

International

• The Australian state of Victoria will enter lockdown for a third time in a bid to suppress an outbreak of the UK strain of coronavirus.
• Japan’s first batch of Covid-19 vaccine arrived on Friday morning, local media reported, with official approval for the Pfizer shots expected soon.
• Portugal’s health ministry reported the fewest hospitalizations since 20 January and the fewest patients in Intensive Care Units for almost two weeks.
• Coronavirus infections have started to rise again in Hungary, likely due to the spread of the British strain of the virus, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday.
• US President Joe Biden has confirmed the US has ordered 200m more doses of coronavirus vaccine.
• The Brazilian Amazon variant of the coronavirus disease may be “three times” as contagious as other strains, the country’s health minister has said.

Stakeholders

• The UK economy is like a “coiled spring” ready to release large amounts of “pent-up financial energy”, the Bank of England’s chief economist has said.
• Employers are putting workers at risk and increasing Covid infection rates in communities, unions have said, as research found that as many as one in five people have been going into their workplace unnecessarily.
• Medics say they are beginning to run out of patients in the government’s top four priority cohorts to vaccinate and fear that lives will be lost unless they are allowed to immunise more people immediately.
• A survey by the UK Home Care Association of 379 employers of homecare workers found that by the end of January only 32% of their staff had been vaccinated.
• Holiday companies are braced for restrictions on the number of people they can send abroad in the next year as the travel industry crisis deepens.

Unconfirmed reports

• Social distancing restrictions will have to remain in place until at least the autumn to reduce the transmission of coronavirus under plans being considered by ministers.