Powerscourt Coronavirus Briefing – 16 January 2021

Paying the price for festive mingling as hospitals grapple with the latest wave.

At the Government’s news conference last night there was a somewhat consistent message: vaccines and lockdown are helping but we are far from in the clear.

With the UK’s hospitals in a desperate situation, Johnson doubled down on tougher restrictions at the borders. From Monday, all international arrivals into the UK must provide a negative COVID-19 test and quarantine for 10 days, standard in other parts of the world for at least 6 months now. Cue a surge of influencers “working in Dubai” rushing back to avoid quarantine. However, scientists have warned that with tougher restrictions must come tougher enforcement, arguing that the UK’s policy of trusting people to quarantine was not strong enough. “We will be stepping up our enforcement, both at the border and in country,” Johnson said.

Johnson also took a moment to congratulate himself on the progress of the Government’s mass vaccination effort. He reported that almost 3.3 million people had received a jab, including 1.3 million people over 80 and 100,000 care home residents. Only 11.7 million to go to reach his target of 15 million by mid-February.

Cases remain at an extremely high level with the number of new COVID-19 cases increasing by 55,761 on Friday, and a further 1,280 people reported to have died within 28 days of testing positive.

Chris Whitty said, however, there was early evidence that in some areas the virus seems to have seen its peak, largely thanks to the restrictions put in place, particularly in the south-east, east of England and London. He added, “Other areas that went into lockdown a bit later, that peak will be a bit later.”

In terms of lockdown though, we will not be seeing a lift of restrictions anytime soon, despite reports yesterday that the UK is edging towards a double-dip recession. The Office for National Statistics reported that GDP had fallen by 2.6% month-on-month in November (due to the second lockdown), ending six consecutive months of growth over the summer.

There is some good news for small businesses, however, as the Supreme Court ruled in their favour yesterday and insisted insurance companies do indeed have to pay out an estimated £1.2 billion in business disruption policies. In a victory for the Financial Conduct Authority and policyholders, Britain’s highest court dismissed appeals and ruled that policies which provide pay-outs for disease, denial of access to business premises and hybrid clauses must do so for the government-imposed lockdowns.

Across the pond, President-elect Joe Biden gave a speech yesterday announcing plans to ramp up the current vaccination drive in the US while calling Trump’s current one a “dismal failure”. Biden plans on setting up thousands of vaccinations centres across the country, even recruiting retired doctors to administer the shots.

So far more than 390,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the US and Biden’s team state the toll could reach 500,000 by February.

Elsewhere, India is reported to have begun its vaccine roll-out, aiming to administer 300 million jabs by August.

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