Babak Belurs

Kamis, 11 Februari 2021

Lockdown end-date chaos: PM 'misspoke' on plan - and now schools may NOT open on March 8 - Daily Express

Last week the Prime Minister said he would outline his roadmap on February 22. However, his official spokesman today implied Mr Johnson misspoke and would only commit to the plan being published at some point during that week.

Teachers have been promised two weeks notice before children are sent back to the classroom, meaning if the roadmap is not outlined on February 22, the reopening of schools may also be delayed.

Asked this afternoon if the Prime Minister had been wrong to say he would outline the plan on February 22, his official spokesman said: "I think the Prime Minister, other ministers, and myself have said the week of the 22nd.

"We've been clear we will publish the roadmap the week of the 22nd."

He also confirmed any delay on the publishing of the plan to ease restrictions would have a knock-on effect on schools.

The No10 official said: "You've got what we've said previously about trying to give schools as much notice as possible and we've said we'll give them at least two weeks."

Ministers have committed to announcing a plan to gradually reduce restrictions after a review of the data is conducted next week.

Scientists will be looking at the impact of the current lockdown as well as the vaccination programme to help guide the relaxing of measures.

In a video shared on Mr Johnson's official Twitter account on February 5, the Prime Minister said: "On February 22 I am going to be setting out a roadmap as far as we are able to.

"Giving everybody some more clarity insofar as we can about how we hope to unlock, beginning, as you know I'm sure, with schools, we hope very much from March 8.

"But trying to set out the beginnings of a roadmap for a way forward for the whole country and the vaccine programme intensifies and more and more people acquire immunity."

He added at present there are currently 750,000 people in the UK infected.

"Transmission is still incredibly high in the UK.

"If transmission were still at this level and we were not in lockdown, we would be going into lockdown," he said.

"There are 750,000 people today in the UK infected, there's still huge pressure on the NHS and on critical care in this country.

"We've made enormous progress - the UK deserves great credit for the science behind the vaccines and the rollout, with 30 million people now vaccinated in this country.

"But the transmission rate is incredibly high still and we've got to get it lower, we've got to get it - in my view - into the single thousands before we can possibly think of lifting restrictions."

Sir Jeremy added the global vaccination programme combined with lockdown measures will reduce the risk of future mutations of the virus that are resistant to existing jabs.

He said: "If we drive down transmission in this country, if we vaccinate as many people as we possibly can in this country - and critically around the world - we will reduce the number of viruses circulating in the world and the number of variants that can trouble us in the future will be much less.

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2021-02-11 12:59:00Z
52781366716199

Temperature of -23C in Braemar is UK's lowest in 25 years - BBC News

The Met Office says an overnight temperature of -23C (-9.4F) recorded in Scotland is the lowest in more than 25 years.

BBC weather presenter Simon King described the temperatures in Braemar, Aberdeenshire, as "incredible".

It was the lowest February temperature since 1955, and the UK's coldest night since 30 December 1995.

A Met Office yellow snow and ice warning is in place for large parts of the country until 12:00 on Friday.

ScotRail said the winter weather was causing major problems for its services on Thursday morning.

The official minimum temperatures are now in (we measure it from 9pm-9am). A small but important drop of 0.1°C...
🔷 Coldest in around 25 years (Dec 1995)
🔷 Lowest February temperature in 66 years (Feb 1955) pic.twitter.com/Vso8veUY1j
— Simon King (@SimonOKing) February 11, 2021

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter

Mr King said cold air from Siberia and the Arctic - known as the Beast from the East - had sent temperatures "plummeting" over the last week.

"While we've all experienced the cold wind, it's over the last couple of nights the temperature has got really low, especially in northern Scotland," he said.

"There are three reasons for this: thick snow on the ground, clear skies and light winds."

Freezer temperatures

He said that a covering of snow traps the warmth in the ground.

"So when night falls, where the ground would normally radiate heat to the air, that heat can't get out so the air temperature is lower," he explained.

"If skies are clear, any heat that does get out of the ground, escapes into space.

"Wind normally mixes the air close to the surface, so at night it'll mix the warmth coming from the ground and keep temperatures up. When the wind is light and there's no warmth from the ground, the temperature can fall to levels you normally find in your freezer. Just like we've seen in northern Scotland."

Malcolm MacIntyre, of the Braemar Mountain Rescue Team, told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland: "It is a beautiful morning actually and it is really cold.

"The snow is squeaky, which always signifies that it is really cold.

"But in some ways once it gets below about minus 10/12, as long as it is not windy, it just feels really crisp and clear."

Scottish Water said it was dealing with double the normal number of burst pipes for the time of year as temperatures plunged.

Hundreds of burst pipes have been reported in the past week.

About 29,000 properties were left without water on Wednesday night in the east end of Glasgow after a mains pipe burst.

Snow diving - Freya in Aberdeen swapping cold water swimming for deep snow diving #Aberdeen #Snow #BeastFromTheEast pic.twitter.com/5fkOyAnxLV
— India Grant (@IndiaRGrant) February 11, 2021

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter

In stark contrast, firefighters worked through the night to tackle a large wildfire in the Western Isles.

The blaze on Benbecula was reported at 15:30 on Wednesday and extended across about 1km at its height.

Traffic Scotland urged drivers not to leave home unless it is essential and ScotRail is encouraging people to check their journey before leaving the house.

The operator tweeted: "We're currently seeing severe disruption across the network, particularly in the Central Belt with disruption affecting services to/from Glasgow Queen Street High Level and Edinburgh Waverley."

On Tuesday heavy snowfall caused widespread disruption across Scotland.

Analysis: Why is reform that important?

The ageing population requires different services to work hand-in-hand, sharing expertise and staff to make sure people get the joined-up care they need.

If that sounds like NHS-speak, let's take a typical patient with whom the NHS deals. She is in her 70s, has heart disease, the early stages of dementia and lives alone.

She needs regular contact with her heart specialist, support from community nurses and, ideally, some company from befriending services which are run by the voluntary sector with support from councils.

If she needs to go into hospital - perhaps after a fall - in an ideal world she will be treated quickly and then the hospital staff will be in touch with community services to arrange the support to allow her to come home.

It helps if those staff are working together in integrated teams, sharing records and, at times, working side-by-side.

But in a world where budgets are linked to individual services, where different organisations are encouraged to compete and tender for work, the pooling of resources and staff is not so easy.

The proposals include scrapping the tendering rule, which sees providers and private companies compete to win contracts to run services.

This rule made it complicated for councils and different parts of the NHS to set up joint teams and pool their budgets, with some having to set up separate bodies to bid for contracts.

Instead, the NHS and councils will be left to run services and told to collaborate with each other to pool resources.

Mr Hancock said: "The practical implication is that these changes will allow the NHS to work more closely together with the different parts of the NHS and, crucially, with social care and public health colleagues.

"At the moment there are rules set out in law that stop some of that working together. We've seen that that's been a problem."

He told BBC Breakfast: "At the heart of these reforms is the idea you take the budget for the NHS in a local area, and you get an integrated team that has social care, the NHS, the GPs and the hospitals, and they commission and they do the work to spend the money as effectively as possible."

A healthcare worker leading an elderly woman

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said Labour "have to study the detail" - but that "you cannot just legislate for integration, you need a properly-funded social care plan, you need a funded workforce plan".

"We did warn the government 10 years ago when they introduced the last piece of legislation", Mr Ashworth said, adding: "That was a set of reforms that Matt Hancock voted for, spoke up in favour of."

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There are still questions as to whether these reforms will integrate care."

Mr Ashworth also said that, although the tendering rule will be scrapped, it was unclear whether the reform would lead to less privatisation.

"There is no compulsory tendering of contract but contracts can still go out to the private sector and as far as we can tell the contracts that have gone out, there's no insistence that they should come back in," he said.

But NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said the move will create a "flexible can-do spirit" across the health and care system.

The white paper will cite examples of good practice, such as a care team at the Royal Derby Hospital which sees nurses from the community, council care services and hospital staff working together to plan the discharge of patients.

Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers, which represents NHS managers, said it would end "an unnecessarily rigid NHS approach to procurement".

The Local Government Association welcomed the plans but said they did not provide the funding to put care services on a "sustainable and long-term footing".

Social care funding

Mr Hancock was challenged over the state of social care - which is under pressure with governments failing to reform or fund the council-run system properly.

In their 2019 election manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to find a cross-party solution to reduce pressures on the sector and provide long-term funding.

Asked about the problem of people not being able to be discharged from hospital because care homes were full, Mr Hancock said there was a "challenge" of discharge.

But he said "it's a challenge of integration as much as it is a challenge of capacity".

Mr Hancock repeated the government's pledge, saying: "We're committed to the long-term reforms to funding of social care."

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2021-02-11 11:55:00Z
52781368001532

Covid-19: 'Too early' to decide on summer holidays, says Hancock - BBC News

It is "too early" to know whether summer holidays can go ahead, the health secretary has said.

Matt Hancock said there was still "a lot of uncertainty" but ministers were doing everything possible to make sure people could have a holiday this year.

He told the BBC he had booked his own summer break in Cornwall "months ago".

Labour and some Tory MPs have called for clarity after ministers urged the public not to book holidays at home and abroad.

Businesses have also criticised the comments as fuelling uncertainty for travel companies already struggling in the pandemic.

It follows confusion after Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned against booking breaks at home or abroad.

Further restrictions on international travel are due to be introduced on Monday.

Mr Hancock said it was too early to know which coronavirus restrictions may still be in place over the summer, but that he understood people wanted to make plans.

He told BBC Breakfast "people are yearning for certainty over whether they can have a summer holiday" but said "pandemics are difficult times and there is a lot of uncertainty".

"We are doing everything that we possibly can to make sure that people can have a holiday this summer but the vaccine rollout is absolutely essential to that," he continued.

The health secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that, before summer holidays, the priority would be making sure people can see loved ones again.

He said it was too early to say when this might happen but the prime minister would set out more details in the week beginning 22 February.

Meanwhile, Mr Hancock said 90% of people had accepted an offer of a coronavirus vaccine - much higher than predictions about 75% would take a jab.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged two million people who have yet to accept their offer of a vaccine to "come forward" this week.

Ministers tangle once more

Analysis box by Laura Kuenssberg, political editor

It's a classic Covid situation.

Ministers' remarks clash with each other - in emphasis or fact sometimes - because they just do not know exactly what the situation will be, so they have no solid decision to explain.

And if they don't know, well there's not much they can tell us.

There is a separate conversation about just how vital clarity in government communications is during a public health crisis, whether ministers stick to exactly the same script is a matter that can affect life and death.

There are also ways for experienced politicians to not answer questions, even if it makes some people shout at the telly or turn off the radio.

But when it comes to looking more than a few weeks into the future, in the way that we all want to, all too often, ministers have ended up in a tangle.

NHS reform: Shake-up to improve care, Hancock says - BBC News

Health and care services will work more closely together under plans to reform the NHS in England, the government has said.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock will set out plans for a "more integrated, more innovative and responsive" NHS.

He said he wanted to target "burdensome bureaucracy".

But Labour questioned the timing of the restructure amid the pandemic and said patients could not be helped without a "properly-funded social care plan".

On the timing, Mr Hancock said: "You've got to do both. When we come out of this pandemic, and we will, we need to build a better, stronger NHS."

The shake-up will see the law changed to reverse reforms of the NHS in England introduced under David Cameron in 2012.

The full white paper - which sets out the proposed future legislation - will be published later.

Ministers believe the changes will put the NHS in a better position to cope with an ageing population and a rise in people with complex health conditions.

One-in-three patients admitted to hospital as an emergency has five or more health conditions, such as diabetes, obesity or asthma, up from one-in-10 a decade ago.

Those working in the health service said many of the rules in place were time-consuming, frustrating and stressful.

Nigel Edwards, of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said the changes would be a "re-wiring behind the dashboard" and should not be too noticeable to patients.

While it was not a "magic bullet", it could help different parts of the system work more closely together, he added.

Analysis: Why is reform that important?

The ageing population requires different services to work hand-in-hand, sharing expertise and staff to make sure people get the joined-up care they need.

If that sounds like NHS-speak, let's take a typical patient with whom the NHS deals. She is in her 70s, has heart disease, the early stages of dementia and lives alone.

In a world where budgets are linked to individual services, where different organisations are encouraged to compete and tender for work, the pooling of resources and staff is not so easy.

The proposals include scrapping the tendering rule, which sees providers and private companies compete to win contracts to run services.

This rule made it complicated for councils and different parts of the NHS to set up joint teams and pool their budgets, with some having to set up separate bodies to bid for contracts.

Instead, the NHS and councils will be left to run services and told to collaborate with each other to pool resources.

"At the moment there are rules set out in law that stop some of that working together. We've seen that that's been a problem."

"We did warn the government 10 years ago when they introduced the last piece of legislation", Mr Ashworth said, adding: "That was a set of reforms that Matt Hancock voted for, spoke up in favour of."

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There are still questions as to whether these reforms will integrate care."

Mr Ashworth also said that, although the tendering rule will be scrapped, it was unclear whether the reform would lead to less privatisation.

But NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said the move will create a "flexible can-do spirit" across the health and care system.

Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers, which represents NHS managers, said it would end "an unnecessarily rigid NHS approach to procurement".

The Local Government Association welcomed the plans but said they did not provide the funding to put care services on a "sustainable and long-term footing".

Social care funding

Mr Hancock was challenged over the state of social care - which is under pressure with governments failing to reform or fund the council-run system properly.

In their 2019 election manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to find a cross-party solution to reduce pressures on the sector and provide long-term funding.

Asked about the problem of people not being able to be discharged from hospital because care homes were full, Mr Hancock said there was a "challenge" of discharge.

But he said "it's a challenge of integration as much as it is a challenge of capacity".

Mr Hancock repeated the government's pledge, saying: "We're committed to the long-term reforms to funding of social care."

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NHS reform: Shake-up to improve care, Hancock says - BBC News

Health and care services will work more closely together under plans to reform the NHS in England, the government has said.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock will set out plans for a "more integrated, more innovative and responsive" NHS.

He said he wanted to target "burdensome bureaucracy".

But Labour questioned the timing of the reorganisation in the midst of the pandemic.

The shake-up will see the law changed to reverse reforms of the NHS in England introduced under David Cameron in 2012.

The full white paper - which sets out the proposed future legislation - will be published later.

Ministers believe the changes will put the NHS in a better position to cope with an ageing population and a rise in people with complex health conditions.

One-in-three patients admitted to hospital as an emergency has five or more health conditions, such as diabetes, obesity or asthma, up from one-in-10 a decade ago.

Those working in the health service said many of the rules in place were time-consuming, frustrating and stressful.

Nigel Edwards, of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said the changes would be a "re-wiring behind the dashboard" and should not be too noticeable to patients.

While it was not a "magic bullet", it could help different parts of the system work more closely together, he added.

Analysis: Why is reform that important?

The ageing population requires different services to work hand-in-hand, sharing expertise and staff to make sure people get the joined-up care they need.

If that sounds like NHS-speak, let's take a typical patient with whom the NHS deals. She is in her 70s, has heart disease, the early stages of dementia and lives alone.

In a world where budgets are linked to individual services, where different organisations are encouraged to compete and tender for work, the pooling of resources and staff is not so easy.

The proposals include scrapping the tendering rule, which sees companies and providers compete to win contracts to run services.

This rule made it complicated for councils and different parts of the NHS to set up joint teams and pool their budgets, with some having to set up separate bodies to bid for contracts.

Instead, the NHS and councils will be left to run services and told to collaborate with each other to pool resources.

"At the moment there are rules set out in law that stop some of that working together. We've seen that that's been a problem."

On the timing of the reform in a pandemic, Mr Hancock said: "You've got to do both. When we come out of this pandemic, and we will, we need to build a better, stronger NHS."

NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said it will create a "flexible can-do spirit" across the health and care system.

Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers, which represents NHS managers, said it would end "an unnecessarily rigid NHS approach to procurement".

The Local Government Association welcomed the plans but said they did not provide the funding to put care services on a "sustainable and long-term footing".

Shadow health secretary Mr Ashworth said "we did warn the government 10 years ago when they introduced the last piece of legislation", adding: "That was a set of reforms that Matt Hancock voted for, spoke up in favour of."

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There are still questions as to whether these reforms will integrate care."

He said ministers needed to point out how this would help the growing numbers of people facing long waits for treatment and ease the pressure on services.

Social care funding

Mr Hancock was challenged over the state of social care - which is under pressure with governments failing to reform or fund the council-run system properly.

In their 2019 election manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to find a cross-party solution to reduce pressures on the sector and provide long-term funding.

Asked about the problem of people not being able to be discharged from hospital because care homes were full, Mr Hancock said there was a "challenge" of discharge.

But he said "it's a challenge of integration as much as it is a challenge of capacity".

Mr Hancock repeated the government's pledge, saying: "We're committed to the long-term reforms to funding of social care."

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Kamis, 11 Februari 2021

Lockdown end-date chaos: PM 'misspoke' on plan - and now schools may NOT open on March 8 - Daily Express

Temperature of -23C in Braemar is UK's lowest in 25 years - BBC News

Freezer temperatures

Related Internet Links

NHS reform: Shake-up to improve care, Hancock says - BBC News

Analysis: Why is reform that important?

Social care funding

Covid-19: 'Too early' to decide on summer holidays, says Hancock - BBC News

Ministers tangle once more

NHS reform: Shake-up to improve care, Hancock says - BBC News

Analysis: Why is reform that important?

Social care funding

NHS reform: Shake-up to improve care, Hancock says - BBC News

Analysis: Why is reform that important?

Social care funding