Coronavirus news – live: UK reports new record daily death toll, as PM warns there is ‘more to come’

The immense pressure bearing down on hospitals around the country will no let up until “well into the spring", a leading intensive care doctor has warned. 

“The fact that people perceive that intensive care units up and down the country are coping doesn't mean that we have actually not been overwhelmed, because we have,” Dr Daniele Bryden, vice-dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, told Sky News.

“NHS staff have been transferring patients across the country for critical care, we have been using other staff groups to help us deliver care and intensive care nurses have been looking after significantly more patients than they normally would do.

“So it's an adjustment of the term 'coping', I think, really.”

Two two hospital trusts in the midlands are set to begin a pilot of 24-hour coronavirus vaccinations today.

The University Hospitals of Birmingham and Nottingham’s Sherwood Forest Hospitals Foundation Trust were selected as the first two trusts in the country to provide round-the-clock jabs.

There is expected to be a focus on hospital staff for late night vaccinations, according to the BBC.

The UK’s borders should have been closed last March to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Priti Patel has said.

The home secretary said she advocated the measure at the time but suggested she was overruled by others in government.

"On 'should have have closed our borders earlier', the answer is yes," she told a meeting of Conservative supporters last night, according to a recording of the event obtained by the Guido Fawkes website.

Read the full story from Policy Correspondent Jon Stone here: 

Priti Patel said it was not the time to talk about whether the government had mismanaged the pandemic.

Speaking as the UK headed towards another grim milestone with coronavirus deaths nearing 100,000, the home secretary told BBC Breakfast: “I don't think this is the time to talk about mismanagement.

“Governments respond very differently - we've seen that across the world, but based on the facts, the science, the evidence that has been presented to us as decision-makers. We have seen harrowing death tolls around the world.”

The home secretary said work is underway to move police, fire and other frontline workers forward in the queue for coronavirus vaccines.

“The health secretary and I are working to absolutely make that happen," Priti Patel told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “I will be very clear about that."

She said “logistical plans” were in place already, adding “If the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation says [prioritising] is a possibility, we can make it happen.”

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is likely to provide protection against the coronavirus variant first detected in the UK, new research shows.

Analysis of blood taken from vaccine trial participants suggests the Pfizer jab can overcome more mutations in the Covid variant than previously known.

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The government has paused a key part of their testing plan for schools following advice from Public Health England, who said the balance between risks and benefits was “unclear”.  

Daily rapid coronavirus testing had been made available to staff and students if they were indentified as a close contact of a confirmed Covid-19 case, allowing them to forgo self-isolation if negative.  

But experts have since warned the plan could leave infected people in school, due to concerns over the accuracy of Lateral Flow Devices being used.

Read the full story from Zoe Tidman here:

Some British hospitals look like war zones as doctors struggle to cope with an influx of coronavirus patients, the government's top scientific adviser said this morning.

“It may not look like it when you go for a walk in the park, but when you go into a hospital, this is very, very bad at the moment with enormous pressure and in some cases it looks like a war zone in terms of the things that people are having to deal with,” Sir Patrick Vallance told Sky News.

“There have been huge numbers of cases, the NHS is under enormous pressure at the moment.” 

Several opposition politicians have reacted with exasperation after Priti Patel said she pushed for borders to be closed last March when the pandemic first took hold in the UK.

Her opposite number, Labour’s shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds, said “This is a shocking admission from the home secretary about the government’s failure to secure the UK’s borders against Covid," and called for a review of border policy.

Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, suggested Ms Patel ought to have been able to close the borders by strength of her position. And shadow justice secretary David Lammy spoke out along the same line.

Following yesterday’s grim record of 1,610 daily deaths from coronavirus, Rory Sullivan has taken a look around the world to find countries that have seen fewer fatalities throughout the entire pandemic than Britain did in one day.

Any guesses? Have a read here: