Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

25 June 2021

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

Key Announcements:

• There were 16,703 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 yesterday, and 21 people died within 28 days of a positive test, government statistics show. Up to and including 23 June, a total of 43,656,327 people have had a first dose of a Covid vaccine and 31,908,103 have had a second dose.
• Last night, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced several changes to the Government’s traffic light for travel from 30 June. Destinations set to be added to the green list include Malta, Madeira, the Balearic Islands, several Caribbean islands, and several UK overseas territories. Eritrea, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Mongolia, Tunisia and Uganda, will be moved from the amber list to the red list.
• The Transport Secretary also confirmed that later in the summer, double vaccinated people would not have to isolate when travelling from amber list countries.
• The National Audit Office has published a progress report on NHS England’s test and trace system which has found that although performance has improved, there are still big issues such as contact tracing still being too slow, a continued over-reliance on consultants, and the failure to account for around 600m lateral flow tests.
• Politico reports that the Events Research Programme report into the impact of mass gatherings will be published today.

Devolved

• The BBC reports that the Wales’s third Covid wave is being fuelled by clusters of cases mostly affecting children and young people. The weekly case rate in Wales has risen to its highest since March, and with most vulnerable and elderly people vaccinated, the focus is now on whether hospitalisations will increase.
• In Scotland, almost 3,000 new Covid cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours, the second day in a row the number has hit a record high.

International

• African Union special envoy to the African vaccine acquisition task team, Strive Masiyiwa, has accused the world’s richest nations of deliberately failing to provide enough Covid vaccines to the continent. He added that the Covax scheme had failed to keep its promise to secure production of 700m doses of vaccines in time for delivery by December 2021.
• The emperor of Japan has raised concern over the possible spread of coronavirus during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. His comments come only days after the Government ended a full state of emergency in Tokyo.

Stakeholders

• Thinktank Onward has published a report on lost learning, which finds that there are vast geographical inequalities in children’s access to a good education, and calls for the Government to take sustained action to turn around failing schools in many of the poorest parts of England.
• The head of the British Olympic Association, Andy Anson, has said that the organisation is still “trying to convince” some athletes to have the Covid vaccine before Tokyo 2020 starts next month. He explained that although the vast majority would have both doses by the start of the competition, there were individuals who did not want to be vaccinated.