Covid news: 8% of hospital cases may have come from wards, as NHS says it is set to hit vaccine target

Members of ethnic minority multigenerational households should be vaccinated at the same time to ensure they have the maximum protection from coronavirus, a charity has said.

The government is being urged to prioritise vaccinating ethnic minority groups after research showed that people of South Asian background have continued to experience disproportionately high Covid-19 death rates.

The Runnymede Trust said it is amplifying its call and the government should particularly focus on Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities who live in densely populated urban areas.

A review by Public Health England found overcrowding can contribute to the spread of Covid-19 and is more prevalent in black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) households.

The Scottish government must give "serious thought" to border controls to stop travellers entering Scotland by landing elsewhere in the UK, the health secretary has said.

New quarantine rules in Scotland mean that from Monday, travellers from any country will be forced to self-isolate in a hotel for 10 days on arrival.

In England, only travellers arriving from so-called "red list" countries will need to quarantine, which means someone flying in from elsewhere could land in England and then cross the border into Scotland themselves without the need to self-isolate - and avoiding the £1,750 hotel accommodation fee that goes with it.

Discussions between the two governments are ongoing, but health secretary Jeane Freeman said Scotland may need to look at other options to prevent Covid-19 from being imported into the country.

Downing Street has insisted its hotel quarantine policy is “in line” with other countries, despite being warned by an Australian epidemiologist that allowing travellers to leave their room for fresh air is “very risky”.

Professor Michael Toole, from the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Victoria, said there had been Covid-19 cases in the city where an infected guest opened their room door and “with the positive pressure, this kind of fog of virus went out into the corridor, travelled down and infected hotel staff”.

But Downing Street defended its level of restrictions, with a spokesman telling a Westminster briefing: “They are in line with other countries who are taking this approach.

“We require repeat testing, travellers to quarantine inside their room for 10 days and we have strict penalties in place for anyone who fails to comply.”

He said travellers are allowed outside for exercise “with permission from hotel staff”, but stressed that the list of exemptions to staying inside the hotel room is “quite limited”.

Waheed Saleem, West Midlands deputy police and crime commissioner, said Birmingham Airport is expecting to process only a handful of passengers from red list countries each month.

He said: "We are expecting about two per cent of those flights, so about 20 (passengers) a month.

"That's the number of people coming from those red list countries - so it's not going to be as much as other areas, like Heathrow, for instance."

Mr Saleem added: "It will be private security and Border Force policing this with support from us, the police, where there are particular issues."

West Midlands Mayor Andy Street said "a number of hotels had been identified" around Birmingham Airport to take passengers arriving from red list countries, but they had "not become public knowledge yet".

He added: "The number of people arriving from red list countries at Birmingham Airport, is actually very low.

"There are not direct flights (to Birmingham) from the red list countries - there are flights from people connecting from red list countries."

He added: "My personal view is it's better that number, however small, are in these places of quarantine, rather than straight into the community."

The total number of lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK has now exceeded four million since the outbreak began, according to the government’s dashboard.

All hypotheses are still open in the World Health Organisation’s search for the origins of Covid-19, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has told a briefing.

A WHO-led mission in China said this week that it was not looking further into the question of whether the virus escaped from a lab, which it considered highly unlikely.

“Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. Having spoken with some members of the team, I wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study,” Tedros said.

“Some of that work may lie outside the remit and scope of this mission. We have always said that this mission would not find all the answers, but it has added important information that takes us closer to understanding the origins of the Covid-19 virus,” he said.

The mission has said its main hypotheses are that the virus originated in a bat, although there are several possible scenarios for how it passed to humans, possibly first by infecting another species of animal.

New data from NHS England has revealed more than 30 local areas have now vaccinated more than nine out of 10 of the over-75s. Shaun Lintern reports:

Novotel London Heathrow will be one of the locations for the government's mandatory quarantine hotel system, a company spokesperson has said.

“Novotel London Heathrow T1 T2 T3 has answered the call from government to assist with the mandatory hotel quarantine in order to support the safe return of Brits,” a spokesperson for the hotel’s owner Accor said.

“Covid government policy is designed to control the virus and keep people safe and our role is to support that action.

“Our priority remains the health and safety of our guests and hotel teams in addition to doing what we can to expedite the control of the crisis and ensure business and travel recovery as soon as possible.”

They added: “Throughout the crisis we and our partners have proudly held a people-first position, supporting our guests and communities.

“Accommodating those in crisis and those fighting the crisis throughout the pandemic has accelerated our knowledge of health and safety procedures and enables our frontline hotel teams to do what they do best, which is to take good care of people.”

Vulnerable housebound people in some areas of the UK have still not been vaccinated against coronavirus, while younger, healthier people are already receiving jabs.

The Independent has learned that some people in their 80s and 90s have not yet been contacted for their first dose, with anxious relatives fearing that many housebound elderly people have been forgotten.

Our reporter Jane Dalton has the full story below: