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

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has renewed calls for the government to start vaccinating teachers and school staff once the rollout of the jab to the most vulnerable groups is complete.

Speaking during a visit to south London he said: "The reason for that is not because teachers and school staff are more at risk. It is because of the disruption that will be caused to schools if they are not vaccinated.

"What we saw in the autumn was schools being open but actually being highly disrupted because children are in one week and out the next week.

"That cannot be our ambition for March 8. So this is to make the get-back-to-school real and workable."

Boris Johnson said he had not taken a decision on whether there would be a return to the tier system following the lockdown, and a national approach was an option.

He told reporters: "It may be that a national approach, going down the tiers in a national way, might be better this time round, given that the disease is behaving much more nationally.

"If you look at the way the new variant has taken off across the country, it's a pretty national phenomenon.

"The charts I see, we're all sort of moving pretty much in the same sort of way, I mean there are a few discrepancies, a few differences, so it may be that we will go for a national approach but there may be an advantage still in some regional differentiation as well. I'm keeping an open mind on that."

The director of public health for Hertfordshire has said they would be starting door-to-door testing this week after one case of the South African variant was found in the county.

Professor Jim McManus said the number of cases that had been detected across the country which were not linked to travel was still relatively small.

"We are talking less than 30, less than 20. It is not a massive number," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One programme.

"We should bear in mind this was picked up by routine surveillance testing which is the reason why we are about to embark on this exercise so that we can find any more cases that are out there."

Two climbers have been rescued from Ben Nevis and fined for breaking lockdown restrictions.

The pair, based in Glasgow, were rescued after getting into “difficulties” on the peak of the mountain at around 5.45pm on Sunday. They were saved by the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team and the coastguard helicopter, then handed a £60 fine.

Get the full story by my colleague Bethany Dawson:

Health Secretary Matt Hancock will lead a Downing Street press conference on Monday afternoon, at 5pm.

He will be joined by NHS England's Professor Stephen Powis and Public Health England's Dr Susan Hopkins.

The shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, has said that the emergence of the new South African variant in two people with no travel links is “deeply worrying and shows the UK government’s quarantine system isn’t working”.

In a tweet, he urged Tory MPs to vote to “secure our borders against Covid” later today.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon will make a statement to MSPs at 2pm on Tuesday to update them on lockdown.

Although the Scottish government has already said the current restrictions will stay in place until at least mid-February, Ms Sturgeon said it would provide some detail on “other steps we are planning to take”.

She said that while the current lockdown “is working” and the number of coronavirus infections was falling, she added: “That said, case numbers are still high, too high, much higher than we would want them to be, so we need to get them down further - then we need to keep them as low as possible."

Ms Sturgeon said that “even with the vaccine programme there is still more we need to do”, and her statement will set out how Scotland intends to go further than measures already proposed by the UK for quarantine hotels.

She said: "We have already agreed, with other countries across the UK, to introduce supervised quarantine from some countries.

"However, in our view the current UK-wide proposals don't go far enough, so tomorrow we will provide some more information about the extent to which we intend to operate supervised quarantine here in Scotland."

The prime minister has rolled out another of his colourful anecdotes, this time saying it is too early to “take your foot off the throat of the beast” by easing restrictions.

Boris Johnson said that although there were signs the lockdown measures were working to flatten the number of new coronavirus infections in the UK, they “are still at a very high level by comparison with most points in the last 12 months, a really very high level”.

“So the risk is if you take your foot off the throat of the beast, as it were, and you allow things to get out of control again then you could, alas, see the disease spreading again fast before we have got enough vaccines into people's arms,” he told reporters today.

Mr Johnson also sought to reassure fears about vaccines being ineffective against the new variants of Covid-19.

He said: "We are confident that all the vaccines that we are using provide a high degree of immunity and protection against all variants.

"The fact is we are going to be living with Covid for a while to come in one way or another, I don't think it will be as bad as the last 12 months - or anything like - of course, but it's very, very important that our vaccines continue to develop and to adapt, and they will," he added.

The NHS is still under “very extreme” pressure despite data suggesting that lockdowns currently in place are having an impact in driving down the number of new coronavirus cases across the country, said Professor Yvonne Doyle.

Prof Doyle, the medical directory of Public Health England, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Sadly we will continue to see deaths, which leg behind the decreasing case numbers, for some weeks to come. There’s a big human cost to this still.”

She added that the UK was in the “presence of a clever and potentially very dangerous virus” and “this is something where restrictions will remain in place”.

“I think the health service and other services that are dealing with very vulnerable people will see quite a tough month, particularly up to about mid-March,” she said.

Dr Alison Barnett, regional director at Public Health England South East, said: "The UK has one of the best genomic systems in the world which has allowed us to detect the variant originating in South Africa here in Surrey.

"I urge everyone offered a test to take it up to help us to monitor the virus in our communities and to help suppress and control the spread of this variant.

"The most important thing is that people continue to follow the guidance that is in place - limit your number of contacts, wash your hands regularly and thoroughly, keep your distance and cover your face. If you test positive by any method, you must isolate to stop the spread of the virus."