Brexit

Express
THE EU has responded to Brexit negotiator Liz Truss, branding her threat to trigger Article 16 “unhelpful” and “unsurprising”.
Ms Truss, writing in the Telegraph on Saturday, insisted she was “willing” to use the “legitimate provision” should a “negotiated solution” not be reached on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Joao Vale de Almeida, the EU’s ambassador to the UK, said it was unhelpful to “keep agitating the issue”, noting the bloc was not surprised by the threat but “we are not too impressed”.
Speaking ahead of a resumption of talks on the Protocol, he said the focus should not be on triggering Article 16 but, rather, on “trying to find solutions for difficulties in the implementation” of the agreement.

Covid

Telegraph
The Chancellor is among Cabinet ministers backing calls to cut the Covid isolation period to five days amid growing pressure for the UK to shift to living with the virus.
Rishi Sunak and ministers from the main economic ministries believe cutting isolation from seven days could help reduce staffing shortages caused by the omicron variant, the Telegraph understands.
One government source suggested 60 per cent of the Cabinet were in favour of the move, although they stressed that such a move would have to be sanctioned as safe by scientists.
It comes as Covid cases fell for the fifth day in a row, to 141,472, with data also showing that cases have started to fall in some areas outside London, suggesting omicron may be reaching its peak across the country.
As debate grows over how the UK learns to live with the virus, a row has also broken out over whether the Government should continue to provide free Covid tests.

Express
BORIS JOHNSON has been warned by a Covid-critical Tory MP about the risk of a massive rebellion over any extension to restrictions and voices further concern the Prime Minister could face a leadership challenge.
Boris Johnson, 57, has had a tumultuous few months inside Number 10. The Prime Minister faced a major 100-strong backbench rebellion, lost the once safe seat of North Shropshire  and has seen his public support slip following reports of Downing Street Christmas parties.
On his return to the Commons, Mr Johnson updated MPs on the COVID-19 situation.
Speaking at the despatch box, Mr Johnson said: “In response to the latest data, the Cabinet agreed this morning that we should stick with Plan B for another three weeks, with a further review before the regulations expire on January 26.

Times
Scientific advisers are under pressure to cut Covid isolation to five days after the education secretary said such a move would be “very helpful” in dealing with staffing crises in schools, hospitals and businesses.
Nadhim Zahawi became the first cabinet minister to suggest freeing people from isolation after five days if they tested negative, three weeks after the quarantine period was cut from ten to seven days. He denied that free lateral flow tests would end soon, revealing that this month’s order had been increased by more than 100 million.

Sky News
A cabinet minister has said he is in favour of reducing the coronavirus isolation period from seven days to five – provided the move is backed by officials.
Speaking to Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Nadhim Zahawi said the issue is something that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is looking at. V
The education secretary stressed the government would have to be “careful” about bringing in the change and would defer to the UKHSA on the matter.
He acknowledged the move would mitigate the impact of high numbers of people isolating with COVID-19, with the Omicron variant of the virus driving unprecedented daily case numbers.

Times
Most hospitals are getting through Omicron without tipping into crisis, NHS chiefs believe, as confidence grows among ministers that further Covid restrictions will be avoided.
There is increasing optimism that hospital admissions in London have peaked and that frontline NHS services will be able to cope with the variant in most of the rest of the country.
Experts suggested on Sunday that Boris Johnson’s gamble in not imposing restrictions had paid off and that England would make it through the winter without a huge surge of serious illness and deaths that would leave the NHS unable to manage.

Express
BRITISH scientists have issued an urgent warning after a new mutation of COVID-19 was detected in Cyprus.
The so-called ‘Deltacron’ variant was identified by Professor Leondios Kostrikis, head of the Cypriot Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology. After analysing samples in his lab, he suggested that two variants of the virus had amalgamated. However, after further scrutiny, British scientists have urged caution, saying that the new find is likely a result of lab contamination rather than a new variant. Dr Thomas Peacock, a research associate at Imperial College London’s Department of Infectious Disease, said he and several colleagues had looked at the available sequences and determined it is “almost definitely contamination” and “doesn’t look like a real recombinant”.

Mail
Scientists in Cyprus have identified a new ‘Deltacron’ Covid strain in 25 patients that combines the Delta and Omicron variants.
Leonidos Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, said the strain has a similar genetic structure to Omicron with the genomes of Delta.
His team has identified 25 cases of the hybrid variant so far and  it is still too early to assess its impact, Bloomberg reported.
Out of those identified, 11 of them were in patients already hospitalised with Covid and 14 were among the general public.
Kostrikis said: ‘We will see in the future if this strain is more pathological or more contagious or if it will prevail.’
The scientists have sent their findings to GISAID, an international database that tracks viruses.

iNews
The spread of Omicron is thought to have peaked in London over the New Year with infections already on their way down, the capital’s director of public health has said.
Professor Kevin Fenton, Public Health England’s regional director for London, said officials are starting to see a decrease in Covid prevalence across the city.
“We think we may have passed or are at the peak,” he told Sky News on Sunday morning. “Data from the ONS [Office for National Statistics] suggests that the peak may have occurred at or just about New Year period and we’re seeing reductions in overall case rates across the city and the prevalence of infections within the community.”
Data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) showed London’s seven-day case rate has fallen to 1,766 infections per 100,000 people‚ down from a peak of 2,042 on 23 December.

Telegraph
Covid cases are now falling outside of London, and all parts of England are showing signs of nearing their peak, data show.
Official records show that as of January 8, new case numbers are beginning to fall in the South East and the East of England, as well as in London, which peaked before Christmas.
Cases are still increasing in all other regions, but at a much slower rate than before.
It comes as the number of people on mechanical ventilators in England drops to its lowest level since October despite experts believing there may be around half a million infections a day.
Daily figures for Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths have been disrupted due to the Christmas period, but are now beginning to return to normal.

Mail
Education minister Nadhim Zahawi says Britain can lead the world in learning to ‘live with’ Covid as infections dropped again for the fourth day in a row amid renewed calls to get the country back to normal.
The encouraging signs that Omicron is not as severe as previous strains are boosting hopes that isolation will be cut to five days to prevent businesses, hospitals and schools being so hard hit by staff absences, in a move backed by Rishi Sunak.
Speaking on Sky News, Zahawi said: ‘I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic.’
Boris Johnson is understood to be currently drawing up plans for a ‘living with Covid’ strategy in a bid to avoid any long-term restrictions which will be rolled out by March.

Mirror
The number of Covid cases has fallen for the fifth day in a row, with 141,472 people testing positive across the UK in 24 hours.
Tragically, a further 97 lives have been lost to the virus, the Department of Health said this afternoon.
Experts warn that although the latest wave appears to have peaked in London, cases are rising across the rest of England.
Today’s figure is a 178 per cent increase from the number of infections confirmed a month ago, with more than 1.2 million cases in the past week.
A week ago the Government confirmed 137,583 cases and 73 deaths, while a month ago, on December 9, 50,867 people tested positive and there were 148 fatalities.

Sun
COVID cases in the UK continues to drop for the fifth day in a row with 97 deaths being recorded.
There have been a total of 141,472 cases reported in the UK today after the 146,390 people reported yesterday when Covid deaths passed the grim milestone of 150,000.
Lateral flow tests WILL remain free for Brits, despite recent reports that they will be scaled back leading to a barrage of criticism.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has insisted the tests will still be available to order for free amid suggestions they could be scaled back despite soaring coronavirus cases.
The Cabinet minister said he is “puzzled” by a report suggesting that their universal availability could be axed as they are limited to high-risk settings and for people with symptoms.

Education

Mail
GCSE and A-Level exams will go ahead in the summer but results will feature some teacher assessed grades, the education secretary said today.
Nadhim Zahawi said that students would sit papers after they were cancelled in 2021 for the second year in a row.
But he ruled out an immediate return to the pre-Covid grading system, saying ‘we recognise that those students sitting their GCSEs or A-Levels have had their education disrupted’.
He promised more information would be released in a month’s time, detailing how the summer exam season would pan out, but insisted booster jabs would allow the exams to be sat in person.
He told Sky News: ‘We are going further and working with Ofqual to say ”we do want to go back to pre-covid grading and the robustness of the grading system”, but we are going to do it in two steps.
‘We are going to go to the medium between the teacher assessment and the pre-Covid for this summer,  and then we will go to pre-Covid grading the year after.’

iNews
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi says universities have “no excuses” not to deliver face-to-face education despite staff absences due to Covid.
He urged students who feel they are “not getting value for money” to make formal complaints about their universities which, he said, should be delivering in-person teaching.
A number of universities have been hit by staff shortages due to the highly-infectious Omicron variant, and more than 100 institutions – including 23 of the 24 in the Russell Group – plan to offer blended learning this term.
Among them is Durham University which will teach all its classes online for the first week of term, and Kings College London which has also offered remote learning, the Sunday Times reports.
Mr Zahawi argued there were no excuses for universities to revert to remote learning, which was running at about 8.5 per cent, pointing to primary and secondary schools as examples.

NHS

Mail
The NHS has been told to send cancer patients to private hospitals to prevent their treatment being delayed further by the pandemic.
The Health Secretary Sajid Javid reportedly told the NHS at the weekend that it needed to ‘urgently secure’ private hospital beds and equipment to increase capacity amid a rising number of trusts experiencing debilitating staff shortages due to Covid cases.
It is hoped that these plans will avoid future restrictions being imposed in England, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Additional private beds will be paid for by the NHS and include the provision of some forms of cancer surgery and other care not normally provided by the private sector under existing arrangements.
Some beds will also be made available in case Covid patients overwhelm NHS trusts leaving them unable to provide urgent care.

iNews
NHS medics have been quitting in record numbers as staff warned of burnout among an overwhelmed workforce.
One worker revealed he battled PTSD and had to quit as an intensive care nurse last year after the trauma of working on Covid wards, with others left in tears due to the strains of the job.
Meanwhile, NHS Million, a campaigning website that supports NHS staff said it is receiving a “constant flood” of “disturbing” messages from workers who have spent almost two years working during the pandemic.
More than 27,000 medics left the NHS in the third quarter of last year, the highest number on record and approximately 2 per cent of the entire workforce, according to NHS England figures.
Almost 7,000 left due to concerns about their work-life balance between July and September last year, the single biggest reason for leaving apart from contracts ending.

ITV News
New figures have revealed the strain the NHS was under in the period between Christmas and New Year as the health service battled with tens of thousands of staff Covid-related absences recorded amid rising patient numbers.
NHS national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said rising Covid-19 cases were “piling even more pressure” on hospital trust workers as figures revealed the number of hospital workers in England absent for Covid-related reasons had risen by almost 60% week-on-week.
Hospital staff absences due to Covid more than doubled in a week across the North East and Yorkshire with a total of 8,788 NHS staff at hospital trusts in the region were ill with coronavirus or having to self-isolate on January 2, up 110% on the 4,179 reported on Boxing Day.
The new NHS England figures, published on Friday, also show Covid hospital staff absences in the North West rose by 85% week-on-week from 3,966 to 7,338, while in the Midlands it was up 65% to 7,931, from 4,812.

Police

Times
Police officers and staff are said to have covered up more than 100 cases of misconduct by colleagues in an 18-month period, according to figures obtained by freedom of information requests.
Dozens of police have been accused of failing to act in cases where their colleagues behaved inappropriately, such as by making discriminatory comments or engaging in sexual misconduct.
Officers did nothing when two constables, who have since been jailed, took photographs of the bodies of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, who had been murdered, and sent them via WhatsApp.
Forces recorded 83 reports in 2019, and 33 in the first half of 2020, of allegations that the police had failed to report, challenge or take action against the conduct of colleagues.

Cladding

Telegraph
Michael Gove will tell developers they must cover £4 billion worth of new cladding costs or face being excluded from Government-backed property schemes.
The threat will include blocking firms from the Help to Buy scheme for first-time buyers, with ministers also understood to be looking at a new levy on profits.
The Levelling Up Secretary will issue the ultimatum to the sector at a crunch meeting in the coming weeks, having decided to offer greater protection to flat owners who need to remove dangerous cladding from their buildings in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.
In a statement in Parliament on Sunday, Mr Gove will also confirm that he is shelving plans for a loan scheme which would have forced leaseholders in flats between 11 and 18 metres tall to shoulder the costs themselves.
Instead, the costs of the major remedial works on thousands of flats across the country will be met by developers and firms responsible for the scandal.

ITV News
The Housing Secretary Michael Gove has warned that developers must agree to a £4 billion plan to fix dangerous cladding on low-rise flats by early March, or risk new laws forcing them to act.
Gove threatened he would “take all steps necessary” to fix the “broken system” in a letter to the industry ahead of detailing the plans on Monday.
Potential action also includes restricting access to government funding and future procurements, the use of planning powers, and pursuing firms through the courts.
The proposals to alleviate the scandal that has trapped leaseholders in unsafe and unsellable homes come more than four years after the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, in which 72 people were killed.
Leaseholders in buildings between 11m and 18m tall will no longer have to take out loans to cover the costs of remediation work despite no new money coming from the Treasury.
Instead, Mr Gove told developers to agree to start contributing this year to cover the “full outstanding cost”, which he estimates to be £4 billion.

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