BREAKING: PM admits cases and hospitalisations are rising but suggests as vaccinations rise we must learn to live with a certain cost of Covid-19.

"We must reconcile ourselves, sadly, to more deaths from Covid".
"We have to balance the risks" says PM of the cost of Covid vs the cost of restrictions.

"If we can't reopen our society in the next few weeks then we must ask ourselves when will we be able to return to normal?"

He says it's safer to reopen now than in winter.
From July 19th:

- No more legal limits on numbers meeting
- No more limited visits to care homes
- All businesses can reopen including nightclubs etc
- No more 1m rule
- No more mandatory face masks, but optional in high risk places
- No more bubbles/contact isolation in school
- No more work from home rule
- No more quarantine from amber list countries

Essentially the near complete abolishing of all restrictions on life as we've known it (to various degrees) since March 2020.
Patrick Vallance says the graphs below show hospitalisations and deaths no longer strongly linked to the number of cases, though hospitalisations are rising "steeply" in some parts of the country.

"It's a weakened link, but not a completely broken link."
N.B. All of these measures apply to *England only*, though clearly on issues like mask wearing there will need to be cross-border conversations with Scotland, Wales and NI.

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More from @PaulBrandITV

5 Jul
PM says whether he'll personally wear a mask will "depend on circumstances".

"Clearly there is a big difference between travelling on a crowded tube and sitting late at night in a near empty carriage on a mainline railway."

That's quite a bit for us all to individually assess.
Much clearer from Chris Whitty. He will wear mask in 3 situations:

1. Any situation indoors, crowded, or indoors in close proximity to others

2. If asked to by any authority

3. If someone else was uncomfortable, as a point of 'common courtesy'
Does not sound as if Chris Whitty will be disposing of his face mask anywhere near as quickly as the PM.

Though Boris Johnson adds, "I will wear a face mask in crowded places."
Read 4 tweets
27 May
Why weren't hospital patients tested before being discharged into care homes?

"We could only do that once we had the testing capacity" says Matt Hancock.

Really? 25,000 were discharged before testing. Probably required fewer than 1,000 tests a day. Govt couldn't manage that?
Did Matt Hancock tell the PM all patients discharged were indeed being tested?

"I committed to getting the policy in place, but it took time to build the system".

That sounds like a "yes", but "not immediately".
Sounds very much like Matt Hancock did indeed make the promise, but in his view it was a target, rather than an immediate pledge.

"My recollection of events is that I committed to delivering that testing when we could do it."
Read 8 tweets
27 May
Key question from @munirawilson on discharging patients into care homes without testing.

“If true, this is one of the biggest scandals and tragedies of the pandemic... will he apologise to the families of those who died?”
Matt Hancock says the government followed the “clinical advice”.

The advice as early as January 2020 was that Covid-19 could be spread by asymptomatic patients. Routine testing was surely the only safe way to return patients to care homes. It didn’t happen until April 15th.
Asked whether he categorically promised in March that patients discharged into care home would be tested, Matt Hancock says “so many of the allegations yesterday were unsubstantiated.”
Read 5 tweets
26 May
🚨 Dominic Cummings says the Health Secretary promised in March that people would be tested before being discharged into care homes. It didn’t happen.

“The protective shield was complete nonsense. Quite apart from putting a shield around them we sent people back to care homes”.
This is absolutely vital in writing the history books of this pandemic. As we demonstrated time and time again, it was patients discharged from hospital who often spread the virus through the care sector.

They weren’t routinely tested until mid April.
Care homes repeatedly told us that they did not recognise claims that a “protective ring” was put around them. Dominic Cummings has just proven - if you take his evidence at face value - that it categorically was not. The significance of that statement is huge.
Read 14 tweets
26 May
Dominic Cummings begins by slamming the government's approach to Covid-19.

It "fell disastrously short", he says.

"When the public needed us most, the government failed."

He says "how sorry I am for the mistakes I made".
"In no way shape or form did the government act like Covid-19 was the most important thing in January [2020]. It didn't act like it was the most important thing in February, never mind January."
"The government was not acting like it was on a war footing in any way, shape or form. Lots of key people were skiing in the middle of February."
Read 19 tweets
10 May
EXCLUSIVE: The government will finally announce a ban on so-called conversion therapy in tomorrow’s Queens Speech.

After three years of promises, campaigners now want to see the details of the ban, which I understand are still being worked out.

itv.com/news/2021-05-1…
Some more detail on this...

The government is expected to continue consulting on the exact scope of a ban, including how to protect religious freedoms, which has always been a key sticking point. The legislative route is also TBC.
There are also considerations about how to protect certain professionals eg teachers from prosecution. But I understand the government is keen to move quickly on all this, introducing a ban within the next year.
Read 6 tweets

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