NEW: UK Covid cases fall for the third day in a row.
Number of infections down by 15,000 or so compared with last Friday.
Picture in Scotland looks more positive still. Very clear sustained reduction in cases now. Number of patients admitted to hospital starting to reduce too.
Changes to restrictions on Monday in England won’t have def into UK numbers yet so this doesn’t tell us everything. But if it’s sustained it’s a better place to be and deal with any stage4 effects than we would have been otherwise.
Remember too that schools have now broken up in England so this will have an effect too.
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This is quite the provision of the new self isolation rules for NHS workers on gov.uk. The state is being generous enough to allow someone to leave self isolation for work only to send them back into self isolation for everything else.
It’s been reported that this is the case for other newly exempted workers as well and George Eustice has talked about “test to release to work” but not clear from newly updated guidance.
Assuming that it is/even if it only applies to NHS- questions
1) is this another example of the rules bearing little/no similarity to how humans will actually behave? Ie would anyone actually do that?
NEW: 618,903 pings were sent from the NHS app to users last week in England and Wales. A record.
But the number of venue check ins declined, in England’s case quite sharply. Suggests people are choosing to use the app less.
Given how much infections have gone up you might have supposed the number of pings might have gone up still further. Given that and fall in number of venue check ins, plausible that substantial number of deletions of the app/turning off contact tracing have taken place.
On EWS1 specifically the written statement says the govt's move "paves the way" for EWS1 no longer to be required. But this something lenders require not govt. I've got in touch with some tonight- they're clear they welcome the govt's move but we have no sense of when...
...they might change their policy.
It's also unclear what happens to leaseholders who have already paid out money to for remediation so as to secure an EWS1. Do they get the money back?
And in any case EWS1 is just about cladding AND THIS IS ABOUT SO MUCH MORE THAN CLADDING.
.@columeastwood on the Protocol: “this is the second attempt in one week by this government to put distance between agreements they themselves have signed. Why does he think anyone in Northern Ireland or any other country would trust anything they say from this day forward?”
Eastwood asks this after reminding Brandon Lewis of his previous assurances that NI was uniquely placed to benefit from the Protocol and that there was no sea border between GB and NI.
Brandon Lewis says that it’s right that the govt listens to all of the voices who are saying the Protocol is a threat to the Belfast/GF agreement.