These are the UK coronavirus stories you need to know about today.
Self-isolation Period Reduced to 10 Days
Self-isolation for people who have been in contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19 will be shortened from 14 to 10 days across the UK from next week, the Government announced.
The change will also apply to travellers told to self-isolate after returning from countries not on the travel corridor list.
The new regulations will apply in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland from Monday. Wales has already implemented the measure.
The change to the isolation period for contacts will apply to all those who are currently self-isolating, including those who commenced self-isolation before Monday, the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed.
However, due to technical challenges, users of the NHS COVID-19 app will not see an update to its 14 day counter until Thursday 17 December.
Dr Simon Clarke, associate professor of cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said the move was welcome and would reduce the burden on people asked to self-isolate.
He told the Science Media Centre: "As our understanding of COVID-19 increases, we now know that people are at their most infectious in the first few days before developing symptoms and then for about five days afterwards. The rules around 14 days of isolation were originally brought in back in the spring, when this was poorly understood and when there were effectively no tests available for people in the community.
"Almost a year on, the picture is very different. It is clear that if you live with someone who has had a positive test, and you haven't developed any symptoms after 10 days of self-isolating, then your chances of being infected are incredibly small."
Drop in Positive Test Results
The number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in England has continued to fall, official figures showed.
An estimated 481,500 people in England had COVID-19 during the week 29 November to 5 December, a reduction from 521,300 the week before, according to latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
That equated to 1 in 115 people, an improvement from 1 in 105 seen the previous week.
Although a decrease in positive tests was seen in most regions, positive tests increased in London, and there were early signs of an increase in the East of England.
Katherine Kent, co-head of analysis for the COVID-19 Infection Survey, said: "Rates have declined in both older teenagers and young adults and remain highest amongst secondary school children."
Elsewhere in the UK:
- Wales: The percentage of people testing positive increased in recent weeks. Figures suggest that between 29 November and 5 December, an estimated 1 in 120 people had COVID-19
- Northern Ireland: Positive test results have continued to decrease. An estimated 1 in 235 people had COVID-19
- Scotland: The percentage of positive test results has remained stable. An estimated 1 in 120 people had the virus in the week ending 5 December
The latest growth rate of COVID-19 was estimated at between -2% and 0%, according to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
It said the latest 'R' number in the UK was 0.9 to 1.0, compared with 0.8 to 1.0 in the previous week.
Restrictions in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales
Non-essential shops across much of western Scotland were allowed to re-open today as areas, including Glasgow, moved from level 4 to level 3 of COVID-19 restrictions for the first time since 20 November.
Pubs and restaurants will have to remain closed until Saturday.
A 2 week lockdown in Northern Ireland ended at midnight, with shops, restaurants, gyms, hairdressers, and churches allowed to reopen.
Ongoing curbs on households mixing will be partially eased for five days over Christmas.
Ahead of the loosening of restrictions, Robin Swann, Northern Ireland's health minister warned against a "festive free for all" that could "cost lives and place unbearable pressure on our hospitals".
Meanwhile, Wales announced it would publish an updated version of its COVID-19 control plan next week.
Wales is currently at alert level three following a strengthening of measures on 4 December in response to rapidly accelerating levels of the novel coronavirus across the country.
The plan is expected to detail how national measures would be introduced "in a more uniform and predictable way", depending on a range of indicators, including the level of the virus in Wales and the risk of infection.
Mark Drakeford, the First Minister, warned that Wales might have to move to alert level 4 after Christmas if current measures failed to reduce infection rates. However, he said that was not a foregone conclusion.
Watchdog Criticises Test and Trace Performance
Seven of 10 contracts for England's NHS Test and Trace Service (NHST&T) were awarded without any competitive tendering, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has found.
The public spending watchdog also said that by June – less than a month after the service launched – only a tiny fraction of health professionals and call handlers employed were actively working during their paid hours.
The NAO report, The government's approach to test and trace in England, is an initial look at the aims, funding, and performance of the Government’s approach since May. It will be followed by a further report in the spring, providing a fuller value for money assessment of test and trace.
The preliminary investigation found that NHST&T repeatedly failed to meet targets for returning test results and contacting people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, despite its £22 billion budget for the current financial year.
A target to provide results within 24 hours of in-person testing peaked in June at 93% but subsequently deteriorated to reach a low of 14% in mid-October before rising to 38% in early November.
By 17 June, the utilisation rate – the proportion of time that someone actively worked during their paid hours – was just 4% for health professionals and 1% for call handler staff, the report found. The utilisation rate remained well below the 50% target throughout September and for much of October.
NHST&T failed to plan for the sharp rise in testing demand in September when schools and universities reopened. Laboratories processing community swab tests were unable to keep pace with the volume of tests, leading to delays and rationing of testing, the report said.
Since inception, NHST&T has reached over 630,000 people testing positive for COVID-19 online or by phone to ask them for details of their contacts. It has also reached over 1.4 million of their close contacts, to advise them to self-isolate.
The proportion of people who tested positive and were reached increased from 73% at the end of May to 85% at the end of October. The proportion of close contacts reached dropped from 91% in the last week of May to 60% in the last week of October.
Despite efforts by national and local Governments to increase public engagement with tracing, surveys suggest that the proportion of contacts fully complying with requests to self-isolate might range from 10% to 59%, the report notes.
Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, commented: "The Government has rapidly increased testing and tracing activity, building significant new infrastructure and capacity from scratch. However, it has struggled to test and trace as many people as it has capacity to, or to reach the contacts of people testing positive quickly enough.
"Test and Trace is core to the UK's pandemic response. It must improve its performance with a focus on effective engagement with the public and integration with local efforts to improve tracing."
The Health Foundation said it had previously expressed concerns whether the NHST&T budget was money well spent, particularly at a time when the health and care system was underfunded.
Dr Jenifer Dixon, the Foundation's chief executive, said: "NHS Test and Trace needs to better use the expertise and knowledge of local authorities when designing improvements to the system. And the Government needs to ensure that local authorities are sufficiently resourced if they are to play a larger role in rolling out mass testing and local contact tracing."
Dr Billy Palmer, senior fellow at the Nuffield Trust, said "we need to ask questions about NHST&T's unusual organisational relationships and unclear accountability".
Vaccine setbacks
Work on an Australian candidate vaccine for COVID-19 has been abandoned after it was found to generate false positives for HIV antibodies in some participants.
The UQ-CSL v451 vaccine was being developed by the University of Queensland and biotechnology company CSL.
In a joint statement, researchers said in phase 1 trials the vaccine had elicited a robust response towards SARS-CoV-2 and had a strong safety profile.
It said that although there was no possibility the vaccine causes HIV infection, and routine follow up tests confirmed there was no HIV virus present, significant changes would need to be made to well-established HIV testing procedures in the healthcare setting to accommodate rollout of this vaccine.
Prof Paul Young, vaccine co-lead at the University of Queensland, said that although it was possible to re-engineer the vaccine, the team did not have the luxury of time needed. "Doing so would set back development by another 12 or so months, and while this is a tough decision to take, the urgent need for a vaccine has to be everyone’s priority," he said.
The Australian Government said it had entered into arrangements for purchasing COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca/Oxford and Novavax.
Meanwhile, Sanofi and GSK announced a delay in their adjuvanted recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine program after results from phase 1 and phase 2 studies showed a low immune response in older adults.
Interim results showed an immune response comparable to patients who recovered from COVID-19 in adults aged 18 to 49 years, the companies said in a joint statement to the media and investors. It said the low immune response in an older cohort was probably due to an insufficient concentration of the antigen.
Roger Connor, president of GSK Vaccines, admitted that the "results of the study are not as we hoped". However, he added: "Our aim now is to work closely with our partner Sanofi to develop this vaccine, with an improved antigen formulation, for it to make a meaningful contribution to preventing COVID-19."
The vaccine could be available during the last quarter of 2021, pending successful trials, the companies said.
The UK Government has agreed access to 60 million doses of the GSK/Sanofi vaccine.
Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it showed "that vaccines are not as simple to produce as the early successes might have implied".
Canary Islands Removed from the UK's Travel Corridor List
Travellers arriving in the UK from the Canary Islands will need to self-isolate for 10 days after the popular winter tourist destination was removed from the list of travel corridors.
The original announcement required self-isolation for 14 days but was reduced after the Government cut the requirement to 10.
Ministers said the decision to de-list the Canaries was taken because of a sharp rise in positive test results, currently at 7.1% for the Canaries overall, and 8.8% for the island of Tenerife.
The requirement to self-isolate will apply to those arriving in the UK from 4am on Saturday 12 December.
Saudi Arabia and Botswana have been added to the Government's travel corridor list.
The Department for Transport said that from 15 December, passengers arriving into England from countries not featured on the travel corridor list – including the Canary Islands – will have the option to take a test from a private provider after five days of self-isolation, with a negative test result releasing them from the need to self-isolate.
Student Testing Programme Announced
A targeted drive to test secondary school and college students in parts of north east London, Essex, and Kent for COVID-19 has been announced by the Government.
The aim was to combat a rapid increase among older students by identifying asymptomatic cases and help drive down transmission rates.
Latest figures showed almost 1 in 3 people in England show no symptoms of having the virus but are still able to pass it on, the Department of Health and Social Care said.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: "We want to keep schools and colleges open, because it is right both for education and public health, but in the face of rapidly rising cases we must act to target rising rates in secondary school pupils."
See more global coronavirus updates in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Centre.
