Coronavirus UK update live: Latest vaccine news as UK could see ‘significant return to normality’

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, will lay out the “operational plan” for hotel quarantines next week, Nadhim Zahawi has confirmed.

The vaccines minister told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “Next week the secretary of state for health will be setting out the operational elements of this policy.

“We will absolutely be setting out how the quarantine hotels will work next week.”

Asked whether he had been frustrated by the delay in implementing the tighter border restrictions, Mr Zahawi replied: “No, because it is one part of a greater piece.

“(There is) the passenger locator form – you will be refused by the airlines to get on a flight if you haven’t filled in a passenger locator form – so we know exactly where you are, so we can check where you are and that you are quarantined, and you get fined – and I make no apology for the 40,000 fines that we’ve issued already.

“But, as I say, it is one part, and next week you will have the operational plan for how we are implementing the hotel quarantine.”

An investigation has been launched after 1,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine had to be thrown away because they were left out of a fridge for almost three hours, Colin Drury reports.

The batch, worth £12,000, spoiled after being delivered to Stratford Hospital on Tuesday.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said there is data not yet in the public domain which backs up the 12-week dosing regime for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

It came after a study found that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine could offer protection of up to 76% 12 weeks after a single dose.

Asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain whether he can reassure the public that the delay between Pfizer doses is safe, Mr Zahawi said: “Our regulator, the MHRA, and the Joint Committee on Vaccination (and Immunisation, the JCVI) and the deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, and the chief medical officers of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have looked at all the data, including data from the manufacturers that isn’t in the public domain, and they are absolutely certain that this is the right dosing strategy and we will continue on that dosing strategy for the deployment.

“What Pfizer has said is that it is up to the regulatory authority in each nation to make this decision, and our regulatory authority looked in detail at this, as have the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and the chief medical officers, and I think it is the right thing to follow the expert advice of all those great scientists and experts who know what they are doing to say, actually, the up-to-12-week dosing regime is the right one.”

Government scientific adviser Andrew Hayward has suggested there could be a “significant return to normality” by the summer with restrictions gradually phased out once the most vulnerable people in the UK have been vaccinated, political correspondent Ashley Cowburn reports.

The director of UCL’s Institute for Epidemiology, however, stressed that Boris Johnson was “absolutely right to be cautious” in unwinding the lockdown in the immediate future as he faces pressure from Conservative backbenchers over the return of schools.

A UK-based study looking at using different types of coronavirus vaccine for first and second doses is looking for volunteers.

Lead researcher Dr Matthew Snape, associate professor in paediatrics and vaccinology at the University of Oxford, told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme the study was driven by improving “flexibility in vaccine delivery”.

He said: “If somebody turns up to have their second vaccine and they’ve already receive say the Pfizer vaccine and it’s not available that day then can they receive the Oxford vaccine as an alternative? And vice versa, of course.

“That would greatly improve the flexibility of delivery.

“It is good medicine to make sure you have flexibility in what you can do and that you’re protecting against any future problems.

“We’re looking to see if immunising with a mixed schedule is as good as immunising with the straight approved schedule.

“There’s also some potential advantages: in animal studies for example we see a better antibody response with a mixed schedule rather than the straight schedule.

“This is new and this is exciting, it will be the first study looking at using the RNA vaccine, which is the Pfizer/BioNTech one, and a viral vector vaccine which is the Oxford/AstraZeneca one in the same schedule.”

Nadhim Zahawi said infection transmission studies among vaccinated care home residents and frontline health care workers would provide more information on a “roadmap” for reopening the economy.

The vaccine minister told BBC Breakfast: “The phase one, the top nine (groups), is 99 per cent of mortality so I think we should be by then having really good robust data.

“We’ve got two sets of data we’re waiting for.

“One is in care homes where Public Health England are testing residents in care homes because they are in category one, and one with health frontline workers who are category two of that top nine.

“Those pieces of evidence, coupled with other pieces of evidence from other countries as well, will hopefully give us a very clear road map to opening the economy where we see a huge reduction, hopefully, in deaths and hospitalisation.”

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said quarantine hotels are “part of a much bigger plan”.

“If you come to the UK, already you have to quarantine for 10 days, you have to have a test within three days before travel, you have to fill in a passenger locator form … we already have a robust border policy,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Challenged over how “robust” measures actually are, he said: “You have to have a pre-departure test before you arrive – people have to have that or they will be turned away.

“When you arrive, you have to quarantine, even without the hotel quarantine operation yet in place, so the border policy, I think, with the passenger locator forms, where greater enforcement is taking place now than ever before, is robust.

“We’re going to further with the hotel quarantine and [health secretary] Matt Hancock will be setting that out in the next few days.”

A hotel chain boss has criticised a lack of communication from the Government over quarantining international arrivals in hotels.

Rob Paterson, chief executive of Best Western hotels, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We got the understanding that quarantine hotels was something going to be considered in the UK quite some time ago and we’re yet to understand exactly what the protocols are required of the hotels.

“We’ve set out a set of protocols, suggested protocols, we’ve shared that information, and we’ve offered our support and we’re yet to hear anything.

“I think in any normal company if you went out and announced a programme nationally and you hadn’t thought about how you were going to plan that and you hadn’t spoken to the people involved, I’m not sure I’d have a job if I did that in my company.

“To this day we simply haven’t heard anything despite multiple offers.”

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said a government-backed study to determine whether different coronavirus vaccines can safely be used for the first and second doses would not impact on the current rollout.

He told Sky News: “It will report probably after the summer and of course it will have no impact on the deployment.

“If you have currently had the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, you will get your Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as your second dose, your booster dose.

“And of course if you have the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, you’ll get the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

“This is more longer-term, keeping us ahead of – at least in a leadership position, I should say – in the world, in helping the whole world because no one is safe until we are all safe.

“If we understand more about how we can use vaccines together then we should be in a much stronger position in terms of vaccinating the United Kingdom, but also the rest of the world.”

Dr Claus Bolte, head of authorisation at medicines regulator Swiss Medic, said it had requested more information from AstraZeneca after deciding not to sign-off on the use of the Oxford vaccine in Switzerland.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme his team were “not satisfied with the data we have received”.

Dr Bolte said the precise details of their concerns were confidential but added: “What I can say is that yes, it pertains to different age groups, over-65s and over-55s as well.

“It pertains to comorbidities, pre-existing conditions like asthma, hypertension, diabetes.

“It also pertains to the way some laboratories assessments were made.”

He added that the results of large-scale clinical trials in the US and South America using the Oxford vaccine would help to provide more sufficient data.