Coronavirus news - live: Mainland Portugal added to quarantine list and England sees highest weekly case rise since May
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Your support makes all the difference.Travellers returning to England from mainland Portugal must self-isolate for 14 days if they arrive after 4am on Saturday, Grant Shapps has said.
It came after the number of weekly coronavirus cases in England rose by 43 per cent, according to government data, in the highest weekly figure since the end of May.
In total 9,864 new infections were reported in the seven days up 2 September. Positive cases have been increasing since the start of July and are now 12 per cent higher than the number recorded when Test and Trace first launched.
Good morning and welcome to today’s live blog. We’ll be bringing you all the latest updates and statistics on the coronavirus pandemic from around the world.
Doubt cast on family Christmas plans
The public has been warned a new crackdown on socialising is likely to last until Christmas and beyond, throwing their festive celebrations into jeopardy, deputy political editor Rob Merrick reports.
Worsening weather will mean a “difficult period” until the spring, the chief medical officer predicted – suggesting the ban on all gatherings of more than six people in England, indoors or outdoors, will remain in place.
The restrictions are not expected to be reviewed for three months – until the eve of the Christmas period – amid worrying new evidence of Covid-19 infection spikes among young people.
Christmas celebrations in jeopardy as UK Covid restrictions set to stay in place
Worsening weather will mean a ‘difficult period’ until the spring, chief medical officer says – as ‘rule of six’ confirmed for gatherings
‘Waste/corruption on a cosmic scale’
The government’s top scientific adviser has poured cold water on ministers’ ambitions to develop a mass coronavirus testing programme to reach up to 4 million people within months.
Launched by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, last month, the programme – codenamed Operation Moonshot – was talked up again by Boris Johnson yesterday in his first Downing Street press conference since July.
But chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said it would be “completely wrong” to assume that the rapid turn-around tests touted by the prime minister as a panacea for resolving the Covid crisis would even work.
Anthony Costello, a former World Health Organisation director and UCL professor, described the proposals as “waste/corruption on a cosmic scale”.
More on this from our political editor Andrew Woodcock:
Chief scientific adviser says Johnson’s plans for mass-testing may not work
Ministers hope that Operation Moon Shot project will deliver daily tests for millions, at a reported cost of £100bn
No particular reason why number six was chosen for new rules
Transport secretary Grant Shapps said there was no particular reason why the number six was chosen for the social gatherings rule.
Asked about the reasoning behind the figure, Mr Shapps told BBC Breakfast: "We had some pretty extensive discussions with the chief medical officer and the chief scientific officer advising us on this.
"There isn't, to answer your question... it's not that we looked around the world and we found 'ah this country has used a specific number'.
"Countries do use different numbers and then overlay different types of rules. The one thing we know is the more that people do mix, the more the virus will spread.
"We've got to balance that against people being able to practically go about their lives. We don't want there to be a second lockdown, that's not what this, what we want to do is avoid that.
"And the rule of six we found is likely to be the right balance between the two based on the advice from people like the chief medical officer, but I don't want to pretend there's some magic solution to any of this.
"The reality is that you need to set some rules and you need to stick to them and live by them."
France to discuss local lockdowns
The French government is set to discuss the possibility of local lockdowns to tackle rising Covid-19 infections at a cabinet meeting.
French health authorities reported 8,577 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the second-highest number of daily additional infections since the disease started to spread in the country at the end of the winter.
Government spokesman Gabriel Attal told BFM television ahead of the meeting tomorrow: "We do not exclude anything."
The situation is being watched closely in about 20 large cities, including Marseille, Bordeaux and the Paris region, Jean-François Delfraissy, who heads the scientific council that advises the government on the epidemic, told RTL radio.
"We must do everything we can to avoid local lockdowns ...In these (risk) regions we could look into further restrictions of big gatherings of crowds," he said.
Success of Moonshot ‘depends on how it is used in practice’
Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said the tricky thing with Moonshot is not the technology, which she said is likely to be available within weeks to months, but how it gets used in practice.
She told BBC Breakfast: "So that, if you have, for example, a false negative test, but you feel assured that you don't have the disease, you don't end up going back into the workplace.
"Which brings me back to why it's still so important that the critical measure here - although testing is really important, whether it be mass testing or whether it be our routine NHS Test and Trace - the issue is that if people have symptoms they need to come out of society in order to prevent disease transmission."
Mainland Portugal looks set to return to the UK’s no-go list, triggering a scramble for seats on flights from Faro, Lisbon and Porto ahead of the likely 4am Saturday deadline.
British Airways has one seat left at €337 (£301) on its Friday evening flight from Faro to Heathrow, while easyJet’s Friday departures from the Algarve airport to Gatwick are all sold out.
Portugal has seen a surge in coronavirus infection numbers soar in the Lisbon and Porto regions since the British quarantine requirement was lifted on 22 August.
Travel correspondent Simon Calder has more details:
Mainland Portugal set to return to quarantine list, government hints
Transport secretary hints that some Spanish islands many see quarantine requirement lifted
Face mask dispute
A WestJet flight in Canada was cancelled on Tuesday after a dispute broke out about children wearing masks.
Safwan Choudhry was travelling from Calgary to Toronto with his wife and two daughters, aged 19 months and three years old, when the incident occurred.
Just before take-off, a flight attendant approached the family and demanded that his three-year-old daughter, who was eating a snack, put on her mask, according to Choudhry.
He told the BBC that, when he asked if his child could finish her snack first, he was informed that the airline has a “zero tolerance policy” and would not close the aircraft door until she was masked.
Full story from Helen Coffey below:
Flight cancelled after child refuses to wear mask
‘It's unlike anything I have ever witnessed, let alone experienced,’ says father of two
Quiet zones for indoor high-risk spaces
More quiet zones in high-risk indoor spaces, such as hospitals and restaurants, could help cut coronavirus contagion risks, researchers have said, after a study showed lowering speaking volume can reduce the spread of the disease.
In efforts to rein in transmission, a reduction of 6 decibels in average speech levels can have the same effect as doubling a room's ventilation, scientists said in an advance copy of a paper detailing their study.
"The results suggest that public health authorities should consider implementing 'quiet zones' in high-risk indoor environments, such as hospital waiting rooms or dining facilities," wrote the six researchers from the University of California, Davis.
The World Health Organisation changed its guidance in July to acknowledge the possibility of aerosol transmission, such as during choir practice, or when in restaurants or fitness classes.
Microscopic droplets ejected while speaking evaporate to leave behind aerosol particles big enough to carry viable virus, the paper showed. An increase of about 35 decibels in loudness, or the difference between whispering and shouting, boosts the particle emission rate by 50 times.
Normal conversation is above the 10-decibel range, while ambient noise in restaurants is around 70.
What is Operation Moonshot?
The government plans an ambitious mass testing programme, codenamed Operation Moonshot, which aims to conduct up to 10 million Covid-19 tests a day by early 2021.
But scientists and health professionals, including the government’s own chief scientific adviser, have raised doubts that the programme would work - and the transport secretary has admitted the technology for the programme does not yet exist.
More on this from Kate Ng below:
Boris Johnson’s plan for mass coronavirus testing raises concern
Health experts caution against believing mass testing could be ‘slam dunk’ on pandemic
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