Covid news - live: Door-to-door testing for South African variant to begin as thousands urged to stay home

The EU could have disrupted supplies of Covid-19 vaccines to Northern Ireland when it enforced the Irish Sea trade disruption last week, the health minister has said.

Th European Commission performed a screeching U-turn on Friday after it attempted to restrict the free flow of vaccine supplies across the Irish border.

Robin Swann said: "This had potentially very real implications for ourselves because we had vaccine actually in transit, and had that article been enforced we may have seen difficulties in the supply and the arrival of vaccines here in Northern Ireland.

Vaccine is not something that should become political,” he added.

More than 246,000 doses have been administered in Northern Ireland.

It comes as first minister Arlene Foster accused Boris Johnson of a “dereliction of duty” over the fiasco, and claimed he is not doing enough to address unionist “anguish” over Irish Sea trade disruption.

She told BBC Radio Ulster: “I have to say directly to the Prime Minister and to the UK Government that it is a dereliction of duty for a prime minister of the United Kingdom to stand by and allow United Kingdom citizens to suffer, and that is what he is allowing to do at present, so therefore action is absolutely needed.”

The government should consider advising people to wear face masks in crowded outdoor spaces, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said.

Face coverings in situations where people are likely to be close together, including outdoor environments like markets and bus shelters, should be most effective at reducing transmission of coronavirus.

Liam James reports:

The Isle of Man has ceased almost all Covid restrictions - including social distancing and mask-wearing - as community cases of the virus trend at zero.

This makes it the first crown dependency to fully relax all restrictions. It comes after a 25-day “circuit breaker” lockdown was imposed on 7 January following a spike in cases, but the island now sees no community spread of the virus.

Bethany Dawson has more on the story:

French police shut down a warehouse orgy with at least 81 participants on the outskirts of Paris as it breached coronavirus regulations.

Locals alerted police to a party taking place in Collegien on Friday night. Officers arrived to find 11 people in the car park and were granted legal permission to enter the warehouse, where they found a large number of people engaging in an orgy.

My colleague Liam James reports:

The president of the European Commission has blamed one of her deputies for last week’s embarrassing U-turn on vaccine export controls that soured relations with Dublin and London.

On Friday, Brussels announced - and quickly scrapped - a controversial plan to put controls on the Irish border to limit the export of Covid-19 vaccines to the UK amid a blazing row over supplies.

A spokesperson for Ursula von der Leyen told reporters on Monday that Commission vice president Valdis Dombrovskis was responsible for the humiliating turn, reports our Policy Correspondent Jon Stone.

Read his report:

Dr Susan Hopkins told the Downing Street press conference that three of the vaccines that had been used in trials had shown to be effective against the new South African coronavirus variant.

"We expect all other vaccines to have a similar level of effectiveness, particularly in reducing hospitalisation and death," she said.

Dr Hopkins added that further testing was taking place involving the South African variant so that predictions could be made with "greater robustness."

It comes as parts of the UK are to begin “surge testing” in areas where the new variant has been found, with door-to-door testing in the following postcodes: WY, N17, CR4, WS2, ME15, EN10, GU21, PR9.

Matt Hancock said it was “imperative” that residents in these areas remain at home and get a test when it is offered to them, even if they have no symptoms.

"There is currently no evidence to suggest this variant is any more severe," he said. "But we need to come down hard on it and we will."

The health secretary has said that the UK now has 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccine on order.

It comes after the UK secured another 40 million doses of a vaccine developed by French company Valneva, in preparation for the likelihood that repeated vaccinations will be needed to keep Covid-19 in check.

Matt Hancock said during the Downing Street press conference: "My attitude has always been we protect every UK citizen as fast as we can and at the same time we're generous around the world.”

He said the vaccine rollout was a “global effort”, and the AstraZeneca vaccine is currently the only vaccine being deployed globally at cost.

"We will play our part to ensure the whole world can get the jab," he added.

Sadiq Khan has urged people in affected areas in London not to "panic" after enhanced testing for the South African variant of coronavirus was rolled out in parts of Ealing, Haringey and Merton.

Speaking to LBC, the London mayor said: "The concern is that this particular type of virus spreads very quickly - the word is transmissible.

"We need to understand how much of this particular strain of the virus has come into the London community."

He urged anyone over 16 in the W7, N17 and CR4 postcodes to check their council websites for further information and get tested even if they don't have symptoms.

As the UK scrambles to contain the spread of the new South African variant, which has been detected in the community, what have experts said about the strain known as 501Y.V2?

Dr Julian Tang, clinical virologist and professor at the University of Leicester, said the spread of the variant from those with no travel history “is not surprising and was somewhat inevitable” after imported cases were detected several weeks ago.

He said: "This is because we know that this SARS-COV-2 virus transmits very effectively pre-symptomatically - and there will be a small proportion of truly asymptomatic cases for every symptomatic case cluster of this virus.

“So for every case we identify, there may be many others infected (especially with a more transmissible variant) depending on the amount of pre-symptomatic/asymptomatic contacts that have occurred - prior to someone testing positive for this South African variant.”

Professor Lawrence Young, virologist and professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick, added that there are concerns that the South African variant may “be able to more efficiently re-infect individuals who have previously been infected with the original form of the virus”.

“Whatever changes have occurred in the South African or any other virus variant, standard measures to restrict transmission (hands, face, space) will prevent infection. Improved surveillance (testing, tracing and isolating) will limit the spread of the South African variant,” he stressed.