The prime minister was seen talking to passengers on a packed Manchester to Warrington service on Thursday afternoon.
Boris Johnson has been caught defying his government’s own advice by not wearing a mask in a crowded space...
...just one day after he apologised for not covering his face during a hospital visit.
On Wednesday — reacting to pictures of him greeting hospital staff while unmasked — he had insisted:
‘I wear a mask wherever the rules say I should, and I urge everyone else to do the same.’
He had also been snapped maskless on a train to Glasgow for the #Cop26 climate summit, where — again without a face covering — he sat next to 95-year-old Sir David Attenborough 😷
But he insisted: ‘People will actually have seen me wearing face coverings quite a bit more regularly recently.'
‘I think that’s the responsible thing to do and I’m going to continue to do it.’
As 40,004 new cases and 61 deaths with Covid were recorded yesterday, his actions were compared with past government ‘elitism’.
A new global study has concluded coverings reduce Covid infections by 53% — double the effectiveness of social distancing.
‘It’s rubbish behaviour,’ scientist and independent Sage member Prof Christina Pagel, of UCL, told the Metro newspaper.
She said wearing a mask was ‘a small thing we can each to do to keep other people safer and we should be doing it’.
While masks are no longer a legal requirement in England, train operators still urge passengers to wear them.
Mr Johnson’s government’s guidance states they should be put on ‘in crowded and enclosed areas where you come into contact with people you do not usually meet’.
Senior health experts urged people to wear masks to help reduce the threat of Covid & to stave off future lockdowns.
‘Masks are most effective at preventing somebody else catching the disease from you, and they have some effect to prevent you catching it’ (Sir Patrick Vallance)
Dr Deepti Gurdasani, of Queen Mary University of London, called it ‘seriously shocking’.
‘It highlights a degree of selfishness and lack of regard for others,’ she said.
‘By doing this, they put others — especially those who are most vulnerable — at risk.'
Attempted betting was followed by over 700 clicks for ‘anonymizer’ tools, which make internet activity untraceable, and 406 for peer-to-peer file sharing sites.
Online betting accounted for most denied access, with more than 2,000 detections in figures disclosed to @MetroUK
The list also includes 186 tries at logging onto ‘tasteless’ content and 126 of material defined as ‘illegal/questionable’, according to the data released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The research done by the @LSEnews found that there was strong scientific evidence that these animals have the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm.
This means that they will be recognised as sentient beings in the upcoming Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill.
‘The science is now clear that decapods and cephalopods can feel pain and therefore it is only right they are covered by this vital piece of legislation,’ said Animal welfare minister, @ZacGoldsmith
The PM has lurched from crisis to crisis in the past seven days, facing criticism after coming unstuck during a ham-fisted speech on Monday morning when he ‘rambled’ about Peppa Pig World, made vroom vroom engine noises and compared himself to Moses.
Some 11 residents at Millbrae Care Home, in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, were mistakenly given a saline solution used to dilute the Pfizer vaccine once removed from freezers.
Trudi Marshall, Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire nurse director, told @MetroUK: ‘None of the residents who received the vaccine diluent came to any harm and they were re-vaccinated on the same day.