Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed an effective lockdown on over 16 million people in England and reversed plans to ease curbs over Christmas, saying Britain was dealing with a new coronavirus strain up to 70% more transmissible than the original.
"As a result of the rapid spread of the new variant, preliminary modelling data and rapidly rising incidence rates in the South East (an expert body advising the government) now consider that the new strain can spread more quickly," Whitty said.
The developers of the vaccine candidate, which has been licensed to pharmaceuticals company AstraZeneca, have already published later stage trial results showing higher efficacy when a half dose is followed by a full dose, compared to a two full-dose regime. However, more work needs to be done to affirm that result.
Britain was the first to approve the shot for emergency use on Dec. 3, followed by Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The German biotech firm's Chief Executive Ugur Sahin said in the call that he was confident that normal life could resume by next winter.
Britain's communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, said further discussions will take place on Wednesday between leaders from the four nations of the U.K. about the planned relaxation. However, he gave no indication that a change would be announced, beyond urging people to think harder about their holiday plans.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government thinks people should make their own personal decision about gathering for Christmas but they should also consider the Covid-19 risks to the vulnerable, Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said. The government came under pressure on Tuesday to revise its plan to relax Covid-19 restrictions for five days around Christmas, with two influential medical journals making a rare joint appeal for the policy to be scrapped.
Trade and investment with UK pushing India for a free trade agreement - along with Indo-Pacific, defence and security and cooperation for early recovery from Covid-19 - dominated the agenda for the meeting Tuesday between visiting UK secretary of state for foreign affairs Dominic Raab and his counterpart S Jaishankar.
The proudest example of the UK-India partnership is on Covid-19 and both countries want to make sure the most vulnerable countries around the world get equitable distribution and access to the vaccine against the virus, British foreign secretary Dominic Raab said on Tuesday.
WHO is aware of reports that a new variant of Covid-19 has been identified in the UK, although there is no evidence to suggest that the mutation will impact the effectiveness of vaccines against the disease, an official said. UK health secretary Matt Hancock earlier in the day announced that a new variant of Covid-19 had been identified in the south of England, and was responsible for roughly 1,000 cases.
ohn le Carre, the British writer best known for his Cold War espionage novels "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold", has died aged 89, his agent and family said Sunday. The author, a former British intelligence officer whose real name was David Cornwell, wrote 25 novels and one memoir in a career spanning six decades, selling some 60 million books worldwide.
Amid rising concerns over China's covert intelligence gathering and surveillance activities around the world, it has been reported that Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) loyal members have been working in British consulates, universities and some of the leading UK companies.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have agreed to go the "extra mile" in their pursuit of a post-Brexit trade agreement after they spoke on Sunday, which was seen a hard deadline for the prolonged UK-EU negotiations.
Facing yet another self-imposed Brexit deadline on Sunday, the chief negotiators from the European Union and United Kingdom were making last-ditch efforts to bridge differences on a trade deal that have proved insurmountable for the best part of the year.
