Covid

Friday

Robert Peston

The EU is playing a dangerous game with vaccine exports

The EU is arguably playing a self-harming game in potentially restricting vaccine exports to the UK as a tit for tat for the inability of AstraZeneca to supply the 80 million doses it ordered by the end of March. First of all, this looks like unedifying EU sour grapes that the UK, out of the EU, moved earlier to place vaccine contracts and will soon be self-sufficient in vaccines. Second, it risks damaging the reputation of the EU as a place where multinationals can securely invest, because it is blowing up the supply chains of two big American companies with EU operations, Pfizer and Moderna. The UK, desperate for inward

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Could this drug offer immediate protection from Covid-19?

When Donald Trump returned to the White House after a brief spell in hospital with Covid-19 last October he made a video attributing his rapid recovery to a drug he called ‘Regeneron’. ‘They call it a therapeutic drug, but to me it wasn’t therapeutic – it made me better,’ he said. ‘I call that a cure.’ Naturally, given that Trump had on a previous occasion appeared to advocate injecting humans with disinfectant, there was an element of scepticism on the part of many viewers. However, the drug he was talking about went on the receive emergency use authorisation in November from the US Food and Drug Administration. We now have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Covid has proven the benefits of ‘Made in Britain’

Thatcherite Tories have long been suspicious of the idea of an industrial strategy. Their view was that it wasn’t the job of government to pick winners (or, more likely, protect losers). But the pandemic has changed all that, I say in the Times this morning. The old certainties of globalisation have come crashing down. One influential secretary of state’s view is that ‘it proves the error once and for all of the Blair-era assumption that the location of your manufacturing doesn’t matter.’ The last year has shown that even in this globalised age the nation state trumps the market. You could see this in the scramble for personal protective equipment

Philip Thomas

Why we should be wary of React’s R-number estimate

It seems that Boris Johnson will not begin to think about lifting lockdown restrictions until we have clear evidence that the latest wave of the virus has almost been defeated. So it was not exactly good news yesterday from Imperial College’s React Covid survey, which suggested that even though we are in lockdown, the R number is still almost at 1 in Britain – meaning the epidemic is barely shrinking. As part of React’s ‘viral opinion poll’ swabs were taken from over 160,000 people in England between 6 and 22 January. And while the researchers rowed back on a claim in their previous report that active infections could be rising

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

The EU vaccine debacle poses a dilemma for Remainers like me

There is no question about it, at least if you want to evaluate things objectively: the UK has handled Covid vaccine rollout well (at least so far) and the EU has dealt with it badly. For a Remainer like me, this raises a difficult question: does this prove that Brexit was a good idea after all? Compared to the EU27, the UK has been able to act nimbly in vaccine negotiations. While Brussels has been held up by various delays and supply issues, these have not affected the UK. This is thanks in large part to the fact that its contract with AstraZeneca was signed three months before the EU

Thursday

John Keiger

This pandemic has shown the best and worst of France

France is having a torrid pandemic with a succession of failures, from PPE equipment to vaccine invention, a stalled vaccination programme and now interminable and frustrating hesitation over a third lockdown. But we, and the French, should focus on the many things they do get right. Traducing Mark Antony’s speech to the Romans, it is time to praise France not to bury her. The ninth French-organised Vendée Globe – the world’s most gruelling 80-day, round the world solo yacht race – drew to a close in the small hours last night at Sables d’Olonne in the Vendée in western France. Its competitors, overwhelmingly French, have provided a dazzling example of

Steerpike Steerpike

‘Sexist’ covid poster scrapped by the government

Another day, another Covid advertising fail for the government. Fresh from discontinuing a radio ad suggesting joggers and dog-walkers are ‘highly likely’ to have coronavirus, a ‘stay home, save lives’ poster has been pulled.  The advert, which showed women cleaning and caring for children while a man lounged on a sofa, sparked accusations of sexism. ‘It has been withdrawn and removed from the campaign. I will make clear that it does not reflect the government’s view on women which is why we have withdrawn it,’ Boris Johnson’s official spokesperson said today.  Oh dear..

Steerpike Steerpike

BBC shows its pro-EU bias

It’s pretty clear that the EU has not exactly behaved well in recent weeks, during its row with AstraZeneca over the Oxford vaccine. First the German press pushed out an unsubstantiated claim that the vaccine had extremely low efficacy rates among the elderly. Then the EU threatened to introduce an export ban to prevent other countries receiving their doses. And now the EU is pushing AstraZeneca to divert supplies intended for the UK to Europe – to make up for the fact that the bloc dithered for three months before striking its own deal with the company. Meanwhile the UK, so far at least, has pretty much kept out of

Steven Barrett

The vaccine row shows the EU doesn’t understand contract law

The EU rejects ‘the logic of first-come first-serve,’ said the EU’s health commissioner Stella Kyriakides. ‘That may work at the neighbourhood butcher’s but not in contracts, and not in our advanced purchase agreements’. Contract law is an area of law I know well. And it is not a political comment to say the commissioner is wrong. We don’t know precisely what the contract between AstraZeneca and EU member states says. But the EU did publish another vaccine supply contract here. All this makes it very difficult to see what case the EU has In any would-be-case involving this contract, the EU has two massive hurdles to jump. Firstly, contractors undertake to

Jeremy Clarke

The joy of my new British passport

‘Anything you want?’ says Catriona on her way out of the house to go to the shop. I’m standing at the hob stirring a first batch of Low Life’s 2021 Pandemic Second Wave green tomato chutney. (My outdoor homegrown tomatoes stopped turning red just before Christmas.) The wooden spoon stops revolving while I google my brain for things I want. No results. Materially, I have everything I need. Too much of everything. What I once looked on as too few clothes now strikes me as insane excess. I’ve got a Honda Jazz that starts first time parked down in the village, lent to me by a friend for as long

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer’s unseemly performance at PMQs

It was a day of awful numbers. And even more gruesome cliches. The Labour leader started it. ‘Yesterday we passed the tragic milestone of 100,000 deaths,’ said Sir Keir Starmer. Then he informed us that, ‘this is not just a statistic.’ He explained that each dead person has connections to other individuals who remain alive. He gave three examples. ‘A mum, a dad, a sister.’ Then he gave four more. ‘A brother, a friend, a colleague, a neighbour.’ Next he premiered a well-crafted denunciation of government failings that relied on the repetition of ‘slow’ at the start of each phrase. ‘Slow, slow, slow’, he boomed, like the tolling of a

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Boris’s border crackdown raises some big questions

Throughout the pandemic, Britain has taken a relatively relaxed approach to controlling its borders. Restrictions on travel have come and gone since last March, but, on the whole, Britain has always leaned towards openness. The government has trusted people to make sensible judgements and follow quarantine rules upon return. Now attitudes have shifted. This afternoon, Home Secretary Priti Patel laid out the details of the government’s new, quasi-Australia style quarantine policy. Arrivals from 22 ‘high-risk’ areas will soon be forced to quarantine in a hotel when they arrive in Britain. There will be no exceptions to the rule, and travellers must stay put for ten days, even if they test

Dr Mark Toshner

Controlling borders is a critical step in the fight against Covid

Over the last two months our fight against Covid-19 appears to have changed dramatically. The emergence of novel variants in the UK, South Africa and Brazil has generated plenty of headlines and concern. We shouldn’t panic. But one thing is clear: if we don’t act now, we could come to regret it. In the UK, for obvious reason we have been most focused on the B.1.1.7 variant. The evidence seems pretty clear that it is more transmissible and potentially more severe. Part of the reason we have such extensive data on virus mutations in the UK is the quite astonishing efforts that have gone into sequencing the viral genomes. With

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Backbench MPs are doing Labour’s job on school closures

Labour had an urgent question about schools reopening in the Commons this afternoon, but once again it wasn’t the Opposition that really increased pressure on the government but Conservative backbenchers. They are getting increasingly agitated by the prospect of classrooms remaining empty for many weeks longer than ministers had originally suggested, and were keen to convey their concerns to schools minister Nick Gibb. Gibb had to field questions about rising mental health problems among young people who’ve spent the best part of a year trying to learn at home, about parents struggling to work and home-school their children, and about the criteria for reopening. Almost every question from Conservative MPs

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Did Boris Johnson do ‘everything he could’ to limit Covid deaths?

Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Simon Stevens held a very sombre press conference in Downing Street this evening to mark the awful milestone of more than 100,000 UK deaths in this pandemic. The Prime Minister offered his ‘deepest condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one’, and promised that ‘when we have come through this crisis, we will come together as a nation to remember everyone we lost, and to honour the selfless heroism of all those on the front line who gave their lives to save others’. He also pledged that ‘we will make sure that we learn the lessons and reflect and prepare’. This was the closest

Sophia Gaston

The price of an ‘Australian-style’ quarantine system

Richard Curtis’s iconic Love Actually airport scenes may fall on the wrong side of saccharine, but they capture something of the human story at the centre of the travel experience. As the government pursues an ‘Australian-style’ hotel quarantine scheme for the UK’s borders, we should not lose sight of these human moments. With the UK’s hospitals stretched to the limit and the population’s patience wearing thin, it is tempting to envy Australia, where images of seaside holidays and packed summer festivals filter out from the antipodes, shimmering like a desert mirage. Like many of its counterparts in the Asia-Pacific, Australia moved swiftly in the early phases of the pandemic to

Debbie Hayton

Lockdown learning is no match for the joys of the classroom

Schools in January are usually full of life, but not this year. At the start of my day, I walk alone down silent corridors to an empty classroom. There are no children lined up outside; the bustle of school life is gone and the only voice I hear is my own. Welcome to lock down learning where my pupils are miles away at the far end of fibre optic cables. Teachers like me are doing our best to make it work but, although we are not teaching blind, our vision is so restricted that we might as well be looking at our classes down long cardboard tubes. We never did have

Monday

Katy Balls

Matt Hancock’s tests for lifting lockdown

As the government comes under pressure from Tory MPs to provide a timeline for pupils returning to school, the Health Secretary remained tight-lipped in the Monday government press conference on when lockdown will be eased. Asked whether any guidance could be offered on the issue, Matt Hancock cited the number of people admitted to hospital – twice as many as in the first peak – and on ventilators to show there is a long road ahead. The Health Secretary said that the majority of people understand why it is difficult to put a timeline on ending lockdown. He did though point to the factors that would decide when it could

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is this the key to understanding Covid immunity?

Just how strong an immunity do Covid patients develop after they have acquired the infection and how long does it last? The question is vital to the likely future passage of the pandemic, and to how well vaccines will protect us in the long term. Several studies have suggested there is a sharp decline in antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 over time – a paper from Imperial College’s React study in October, for example, revealed that the proportion of the population showing antibodies to the virus declined from 6 per cent in June to 4.4 per cent in September. The researchers were at pains to emphasise that the presence of antibodies does

Steerpike Steerpike

‘That’s insulting’: Therese Coffey walks out of Piers Morgan interview

It wasn’t long ago that the government was staging a boycott of Piers Morgan’s breakfast show. Now, Tory ministers are back on the show. But it’s safe to say there is still no love lost between those speaking on behalf of the government and Morgan. This morning, it was Therese Coffey’s turn to appear on Good Morning Britain.  Morgan quizzed Coffey on why Britain had one of the highest Covid death rates in the world. Coffey responded by saying there were plenty of reasons, including, possibly, the age of our population and Britain’s obesity problem. Morgan then asked Coffey whether she was blaming Brits for our country’s Covid crisis.  ‘I think