Covid UK news – live: Hancock confirms £10,000 fines and 10 years in prison if you break new travel rules

Half of all Covid-19 cases in Rutland have been recorded at a jail in the county, an MP has said.

HMP Stocken in Rutland, which had been free of the virus for 11 months, confirmed in a letter to inmates' relatives that a number of men and staff have tested positive.

As well as lateral flow tests for staff, the jail, which normally holds around 950 men, has organised mass testing of everyone housed on wings affected by outbreaks.

In a statement offering her full support to the prison, Rutland and Melton MP Alicia Kearns said: "I understand that currently around half of all cases of Covid-19 in Rutland are in the prison.

"We will see rates of Covid-19 continue to rise at Stocken, and therefore Rutland, over the next two weeks as a result of the increased testing planned to identify everyone who has the virus.

"I hope this informs residents and demonstrates that significant efforts are in place to end the outbreak.

"Whilst the current Covid-19 rates in Rutland are heavily within the prison, we also have some outbreaks in care homes and we cannot get complacent and must redouble our efforts given how virulent the virus is."

Figures from NHS Digital for the week to February 6 show Rutland has the highest coronavirus infection rates in England, with 193 cases equivalent to 483 per 100,000 people.

In its message to families and friends of those in its care, HMP Stocken said its plan to keep everyone safe includes up to three tests per week for staff.

The Category C men's jail confirmed news of positive cases on four of its seven wings last week, saying the new variant of coronavirus had created "significant challenges".

Health secretary begins statement by telling MPs coronavirus cases have fallen by 47 per cent in the past two weeks.

“High-risk” arrivals to England from next Monday, 15 February, will be taken from airports to quarantine hotels, the health secretary has confirmed.

Matt Hancock told the Commons arriving travellers will pay for the room and meals themselves.

"Before they travel they’ll have to book a package costing £1,750 for an individual travelling alone," he said.

"They’ll be escorted to a designated hotel."

He said that 16 hotels, with a total of 4,600 rooms, had been contracted. Bookings will open on Thursday.

Travel correspondent Simon Calder has the full report:

Travellers face a jail sentence of up to 10 years if they try to hide a trip to a 'red zone' country, as ministers tighten borders to prevent the spread of new strains of coronavirus.

We'll be bringing you more details on this story below:

Conservative former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he "strongly supports" the new border measures.

Mr Hunt, chairman of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, told the Commons: "Does the health secretary agree that the central priority now must be to bring down the number of new daily cases?

"And as we do that, is he planning to introduce enhanced contact tracing for all new cases including Japanese-style backward contact tracing and genomic sequencing of every new case?"

Matt Hancock replied: "We have the biggest genomic capacity in the world by some margin and when the number of cases comes down as our genomic capacity continues to expand - we plan to more than double it in the coming months - then I hope to get to the position where we can genomically sequence every positive case, yes."

He added that "we're not there yet".

Matt Hancock said the border measures announced today will need to be replaced "over time with a system of safe and free international travel".

The health secretary told the Commons: "Of course these measures, whilst necessary now, are not measures that can be in place permanently. We need to replace them over time with a system of safe and free international travel. That's where we need to get to.

"The first task is to vaccinate the population. If we get good news on the vaccination impact on hospitalisations and deaths from people who have new mutations, then we will be in a better place. If we do not get such good news, then we will need to use the updated vaccines to protect against the variants of concerns."

Conservative William Wragg has asked whether the conditions for ending lockdown have changed.

He said the original purpose of lockdown was "to keep hospitals from falling over and to reduce hospitalisations", adding: "So if that is achieved through a vaccination programme, is it now the government's intention to use the level of the virus in circulation - the number of cases in the population - as the determination as when to ease lockdown?"

Health secretary Matt Hancock said this was not the case and that the prime minister had set out the four conditions that need to be met before lockdown can be eased, which he will be giving an update about on 22 February.

Home secretary Priti Patel is looking into the case of a passenger arriving in the UK from South Africa without receiving any checks.

Yvette Cooper, Labour chairwoman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "Yesterday the home secretary told me in parliament that 100 per cent compliance checks were now taking place at the border.

"Yet one passenger arriving at Heathrow yesterday from South Africa via Qatar has reported having no checks on her forms or tests and being sent on her way through passport e-gates."

Responding, health secretary Matt Hancock told the Commons: "The home secretary is looking into this individual case and the measures that we announced today further strengthen the enforcement to make sure that the rules that are currently in place are enforced more strongly and indeed that we have brought in a new system of rules to strengthen the safeguards at our border yet further."

New coronavirus vaccines may not be needed if the current jabs keep people out of hospital, the head of the Oxford University vaccine group has told MPs.

Professor Andrew Pollard told the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus the jury was still out on whether new vaccines would be necessary but said scientists and pharmaceutical firms were working to get them ready anyway.

AstraZeneca, whose vaccine with Oxford is currently being rolled out across the UK, has said it expects to have a new version to tackle variants ready by the autumn.

The second wave of coronavirus peaked in England and Wales on 19 January at 1,404 deaths in a single day, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistic.

Our health correspondent Shaun Lintern explains the figures in full: