Covid UK news – live: Boris Johnson warns of new year lockdown if we ease off now, as new tiers revealed

Mass testing in tier 3 areas

Areas of England with the toughest coronavirus restrictions will be offered mass community testing to help control the spread of Covid-19, Matt Hancock has said.

The health secretary said Liverpool - where 300,000 people have been tested in a pilot scheme - showed how effective the measure can be.

Downing Street was unable to give details of how the scheme would apply for the 23 million people who will be in tier 3 areas.

Welsh police may randomly stop cars 

Police in Cardiff have been granted powers to perform random vehicle stops this weekend in an effort to stop people from outside Wales travelling into its capital.

The move follows concerns that groups of people from locked-down areas of the UK where pubs and bars are closed helped pack out Cardiff city centre's streets last weekend.

South Wales Police said the random vehicle checks would come alongside an increase in the numbers of officers on duty between 9am on Friday and 5pm on Sunday.

Anyone found in breach of coronavirus legislation will face being fined and given a direction to leave the city and return home.

Devon Covid hospital opens

An NHS Nightingale hospital in Exeter has received its first coronavirus patients.

The 116-bed hospital, built on a former retail site, was set up to provide extra capacity to support existing NHS services across the southwest.

On Thursday, it began accepting patients with Covid-19 who had been transferred from the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, which was described as "very busy".

Call for clarity and caution over Oxford vaccine trial results

Experts have called for caution and clarity following the emergence of apparent irregularities in the vaccine trial data released by Oxford University and AstraZeneca earlier this week. Samuel Lovett reports: 

Tory MP Mark Harper has highlighted the contradictions between Boris Johnson’s suggestion that there a pathways out of tougher restrictions, and comments made moments later by England’s top medic, who effectively said that the lowest tier of restrictions were not strong enough to contain the virus during winter.

“That rather suggests if you’re in Tier 2, it is your destiny – at least until the Spring,” the Forest of Dean MP said.

AstraZeneca is working with regulators to investigate a lower dosage of its vaccine that performed better than a full dosage, a spokesperson for the company said, after its chief executive was quoted as saying an additional global trial was likely.

Asked about the Bloomberg report on the additional trial, the spokesperson said: “As we communicated earlier this week, there is strong merit in continuing to further investigate the half-dose/full dose regimen.”

“We are further evaluating the data and will work with regulators on the best approach for further evaluation. This would add to data from existing trials which are currently being prepared for regulatory submission,” he said.

Here’s our political sketch writer Tom Peck’s take on the prime minister’s speech earlier: 

“Lockdown’s over. Everything’s great, but it’s also going very badly. Keep doing what you’re doing, even though it didn’t work. Have a nice Christmas, but if you do it’ll probably be granny’s last.”

The council leader of the district with the lowest infection rate in England has described it as a “slap in the face” to be put into Tier 2.

Alan Connett, leader of Teignbridge District Council, said he was “hugely disappointed” for the area, which has the lowest rate of infections in England over the last seven days.

The county of Devon has been placed in the second highest level of restrictions, partly due to pressure on local NHS resources. Teignbridge has 52.9 infections per 100,000 people, while South Hams has 60.9 and Torridge has 68.8.

“It's not going to be easy – we're already seeing big increases in claims for Universal Credit, council tax relief and hardship funds, and our economy is being hit hard,” the Lib Dem councillor said.

My colleagues on our video team have put together this explainer on which European travellers currently do not need to quarantine upon arrival in the UK.

The mayor said that Londoners’ respect for coronavirus restrictions was the reason why the capital was seeing lower infection rates than other parts of England, convincing the government to place it under Tier 2 restrictions rather than the stricter Tier 3 after the lockdown ends.

“Londoners have done exactly what has been asked of them since the start of this pandemic,” Mr Khan said in a statement released on Twitter.

“Their monumental sacrifice managed to keep the number of cases lower in our city than most other parts of the country since the summer.”