Data not dates

Boris Johnson has said relaxing restrictions will be done in “stages” and suggested that, as with the first lockdown, the hospitality sector will be one of the last to reopen.

It looks unlikely that the roadmap – to be set out next week – will commit to a firm timetable for exiting lockdown, but will instead set out a series of periodic reviews. With a slew of broken promises in his wake the PM will leave himself plenty of wiggle room.

There are murmurings that schools and outdoor mixing will return in March, shops and universities in early April, and hospitality, leisure and sports in early May, although ministers have insisted that the speed of unlocking would be based on “data not dates.”

The big question is: what data?

We’ve seen a shift in the justification for lockdown in recent weeks from the need to protect the NHS back to getting cases down. A poll of scientists in Nature found that 89 per cent believe that the virus will become endemic – meaning it will continue to circulate for years to come. If cases displace hospitalisations and deaths as the ultimate barometer of “success”, then it’s hard to see a way in which lockdown could ever truly end.

Yet Ministers are thought to be reluctant to loosen the rules until new daily cases fall below 1,000. The number of new coronavirus cases reported yesterday was 10,625, with the seven-day total down 27.8 per cent from the previous week. At current rates of decline, it would be April until the number is in the hundreds.

Professor Mark Woolhouse, an expert in infectious diseases from Edinburgh University who advises the government, told MPs on the Commons science and technology committee today said it was right to be cautious but poked holes in the government’s received wisdom on transmission. Children under 16 were not a “significant driver of infection” – there has been no surge in cases across Western Europe following the reopening of schools. He also told MPs that the virus “wasn’t transmitted well outdoors” and that there wasn’t a single outbreak linked to busy UK beaches last summer.

The PM has insisted that vaccine passports will not become part of daily life. Instead, it’s looking like mass testing is back on the cards. Plans are afoot to post 400,000 rapid lateral flow testing kits each day to homes and workplaces in an attempt to get the country to a “new normal”. Even if we ignore concerns about whether they’ll be any use – the medicines regulator has warned about these tests being conducted by the untrained masses – the move seems to be another way of making restoring civil liberties contingent on having a medical certificate. Oh dear.

Tale of two rollouts

Israel has allowed 1,000 coronavirus vaccines donated by Russia to enter the Gaza strip, after initially holding up the delivery.

The Sputnik doses are the first vaccines to arrive in Gaza, which is home to over two million Palestinians, and has reported more than 53,000 Covid cases and 537 deaths.

Israel has come under fire from human rights groups for the huge discrepancy in vaccine provision in Gaza and Israel – 44 per cent of the nation’s 9 million people have received at least one Covid jab.

The latest data from Israel on the Pfizer vaccine is hugely encouraging for the rest of the world. Two doses of the jab led to a 94 per cent drop in symptomatic Covid infections and a 92 per cent reduction in severe illness.

Clalit, the country’s largest healthcare provider, studied 1.2 million vaccinated Israelis and found that the jab is equally effective in all age groups.

SNP suffers rare defeat

MSPs inflicted a rare defeat on the SNP government in Scotland today. They voted 65-58 to declare the exams body and schools watchdog unfit for purpose. The Scottish Greens – usually reliable voting fodder for the SNP – backed the call from opposition parties.

More tomorrow on Reaction on the Scottish education system and SNP travails.

Mattie Brignal,
News Editor