Covid news – live: EU withdraws controversial plan for vaccine export controls at Irish border

Our travel correspondent Simon Calder, reports:

As the government campaign against British people going on holiday intensifies, every Foreign Office travel advice bulletin now begins: “Under current UK Covid-19 restrictions, you must stay at home. You must not travel, including abroad, unless you have a legally permitted reason to do so. It is illegal to travel abroad for holidays and other leisure purposes.”

Coronavirus infections appear to have levelled off across the UK, according to the latest government figures. 

An estimated one in 55 people in private households in England had Covid-19 between 17 and 23 January, broadly unchanged on the previous estimates for the period January 10 to 16, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Meanwhile, in Wales, around one in 70 people had Covid-19, also unchanged from the previous estimate.

The figure for Northern Ireland was around one in 50, up slightly from one in 60, while the estimate for Scotland was broadly unchanged, down slightly from around one in 100 people to one in 110.

However, the ONS said the percentage of people testing positive in England “remains high”, with more than one million people infected in the most recent week’s data.

London continues to have the highest percentage of people testing positive, with around one in 35 people infected.

Additional reporting by PA

Emmanuel Macron criticised the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab earlier today, hours before Europe’s regulator approved it for use across the EU, claiming it was essentially “ineffective” on people “older than 65, some say those 60 years or older”. 

The French president said the vaccine “doesn’t work the way we were expecting it to” prompting the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to later clarify: “There are not yet enough results in older participants (over 55 years old) to provide a figure for how well the vaccine will work in this group.”

Speaking to a group of reporters in Paris on Friday, Mr Macron criticised the delayed dose rollout of the AstraZeneca jab, saying it would complicate the EU’s inoculation strategy which is based on prioritising vaccinating the senior population and healthcare workers. 

“If we look at the strategy of the UK – I’m not the commentator on others’ strategy, but we have to be very careful right now in how we compare vaccine strategies. The goal is not to have the biggest number of first injections,” Politico reported him as saying.

“When you have all the medical agencies and the industrialists who say you need two injections for it to work, a maximum of 28 days apart, which is the case with Pfizer/BioNTech. And you have countries whose vaccine strategy is to only administer one jab, I'm not sure that it’s very serious.”

Appearing to critique the UK’s strategy further, Mr Macron said: “When I listen to the scientists who say we accelerate the mutations with only one injection because the virus adapts … we are lying to people when we tell them they’ve been vaccinated by getting one injection of a vaccine that consists of two injections.”

His comments are bound to increase tensions and follow a widely-discredited report in Germany that there was insufficient evidence to approve the vaccine for over-65s.

There has been much debate in recent weeks over whether the UK’s decision to delay the second lot of two-dose vaccines, such as Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, was medically safe. The wait time is currently up to 12 weeks.

While the government and NHS has admitted it would be preferable to give people two doses as soon as possible, the decision was made to go ahead with rolling out a first jab to as many people as possible so a greater number of UK residents were at least partly protected quicker. 

Wales’ first minister has said that closing the UK’s borders completely would offer “greater” protection against coronavirus than restrictions announced by the government this week.

Mark Drakeford said the introduction of new border controls to protect the UK against the spread of new Covid-19 variants was Westminster “doing the least they thought they could get away with”. 

Another 29,079 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus have been reported in the UK as of 9am today, the government said.

It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 3,772,813.

The government said the daily number of deaths reported within 28 days of a positive test as of Friday would be delayed due to "issues with processing the data".

Separate figures published by the UK's statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 121,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.

Meanwhile, government data up to 28 January shows of the 8,369,438 jabs given in the UK so far, 7,891,184 were first doses - a rise of 443,985 on the previous day's figures.

Some 478,254 were second doses, an increase of 1,956 on figures released the previous day.

The seven-day rolling average of first doses given in the UK is now 358,297.

Based on the latest figures, an average of 418,166 first doses of vaccine would be needed each day in order to meet the government's target of 15 million first doses by 15 February.

The latest coronavirus regulation aimed at cracking down on illegal gatherings will become law at 5pm on Friday.

People caught at house parties with more than 15 people will be handed £800 fines, and will double after each offence to a maximum of £6,400 for repeat offenders.

Under the current rules, fines are £200. However, the £10,000 penalties for illegal gatherings of more than 30 people will still apply only to the organiser.

The fine can be cut to £400 if paid within 14 days. The rule applies to parties held in private dwellings, as well as gatherings held in “educational accommodation”, according to documents setting out the new law.

The European Commission has announced it is introducing export controls on coronavirus vaccine jabs made in the EU.

EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in the announcement that the measures were necessary to ensure all EU citizens had access to the vaccines and maintain transparency.

She said: “For the best part of the last year we worked hard to get Advance Purchase Agreements with vaccine producers to bring vaccines to the citizens, in Europe and beyond.

“We gave upfront funding to companies to build the necessary manufacturing capacity to produce vaccines, so deliveries can start as soon as they are authorised.

“We now need transparency on where the vaccines we secured are going and ensure that they reach our citizens. We are accountable towards the European citizens and taxpayers – that is a key principle for us.”

The European Medicines Agency has granted authorisation for the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for use in adults throughout the EU on Friday.

The vaccine can be used in people 18 and over. It comes amid criticism that the bloc is not moving fast enough to vaccinate its population.

A senior EU official has suggested the UK is trying to start a vaccine war, in a major escalation of the row over the supply of jabs to protect against Covid-19.

EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders suggested during an interview on Belgian radio that London was stoking up the row, reports our Political Editor Andrew Woodcock.