Babak Belurs

Senin, 01 Maret 2021

Budget 2021: Rishi Sunak plans £520m Help to Grow scheme for small firms - Sky News

Small businesses will be given help to boost their software and training under a Help to Grow scheme to be announced in Wednesday's budget.

The £520m package, the Treasury said, was expected to form part of Chancellor Rishi Sunak's updated Plan for Jobs that he has placed at the heart of the government's COVID-19 support.

His speech to MPs is widely tipped to include an extension to furlough aid, currently due to remain in place through April only, as the economy emerges from a winter of widespread disruption.

He will speak as official figures place the jobless rate at 5.1% - a five-year high - ahead of reopening strategies that will see a relaxation of coronavirus restrictions UK-wide after Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled his roadmap for England last week.

Lockdowns since March last year have resulted in the deepest slump for UK output in more than 300 years - forcing Mr Sunak to borrow at levels never before witnessed in peacetime, leaving the national debt above £2trn.

While giving with one hand, the chancellor is expected to give a nod to the pressure on the public finances through some targeted tax increases.

As part of its announcement, the Treasury also revealed in its latest budget tease that there would be a "new UK visa route for firms to attract the brightest and best global talent" in the wake of Brexit.

The Help to Grow scheme, it said, would offer management training with help from business schools to enhance skills.

The 130,000 businesses that are expected to be eligible for support will also be able to claim up to £5,000 each to secure a 50% discount on productivity-enhancing software.

A new online platform will also offer free advice on technology, such as cloud storage, that will help businesses save time and reduce costs.

Mr Sunak said: "Our brilliant SMEs are the backbone of our economy, creating jobs and generating prosperity - so it's vital they can access the tools they need to succeed.

"Help to Grow will ensure they are embracing the latest technology and management training, fuelling our Plan for Jobs by boosting productivity in all corners of the UK."

Mike Cherry, national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, responded: "Practical help matters most when it comes to productivity growth in small firms.

"It has long been a priority of FSB's for government to focus both on new to firm innovation, such as access to the cloud, and boosting leadership and management skills.

"These programmes look set to do both these things, and so it's very welcome that government has taken a proper look at what small businesses need."

Watch and follow the Budget live on Wednesday with special coverage and analysis from 12.30pm.

A special edition of the Daily podcast will be available to listen to from 7pm.

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2021-03-01 22:45:51Z
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Prince Philip moved to St Bart's Hospital for heart tests - BBC News - BBC News

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2021-03-01 22:22:47Z
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Covid vaccines cut risk of serious illness by 80% - BBC News

A single shot of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid jab reduces the chance of needing hospital treatment by more than 80%, an analysis in England shows.

The Public Health England data showed the effect kicked in three to four weeks after vaccination.

It was based on people aged over 80 who were the first to receive the jab.

Government scientists hailed the result, but stressed that two doses were needed for the best protection.

It comes after similar findings were published by Scottish health authorities last week, which they hailed as "spectacular".

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told a Downing Street briefing on Monday the latest vaccine results were "very strong".

He added: "They may also help to explain why the number of Covid admissions to intensive care units among people over 80 in the UK have dropped to single figures in the last couple of weeks."

Also speaking at the news conference, England's deputy chief medical officer - Prof Jonathan Van-Tam - said the data offered a glimpse of how the vaccine programme "is going to hopefully take us into a very different world in the next few months".

But he said it was "absolutely critical" that second doses "are still part of the course of immunisation against Covid-19 and no less important".

Prof Van-Tam stressed there was a "significant likelihood" that a second dose of a vaccine would "mature your immune response, possibly make it broader and almost certainly make it longer than it would otherwise be in relation to a first dose only."

More than 20 million people in the UK have had their first dose of a vaccine - over a third of the adult population.

Meanwhile, another 104 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus have been reported in the UK, and a further 5,455 new cases, according to the latest figures.

The PHE data, which has not been peer reviewed, also suggested the Pfizer vaccine, which started being rolled out a month before the AstraZeneca vaccine, leads to an 83% reduction in deaths from Covid. This was based on people over the age of 80 who had died.

The data also showed vaccination cuts the risk of people over 70 developing any Covid symptoms by around 60%, three weeks after an initial dose.

Prof Van-Tam said the decision to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to older people was "clearly vindicated".

Some European nations have refused to give it to the over 65s because data from the trials was mainly on its effect among younger adults.

Prof Van-Tam said the judgement made by the UK authorities was that it was simply "not plausible" the vaccine would only work on younger adults.

He said other countries would doubtless be "very interested" in the data coming out of the UK.

Dr Mary Ramsay, Public Health England's head of immunisation, said there was growing evidence that the vaccines were working to reduce infections and save lives.

"While there remains much more data to follow, this is encouraging and we are increasingly confident that vaccines are making a real difference," she said.

However, more evidence is needed to know how well the vaccines protect against the Brazil variant that has recently been identified in the UK.

This variant has a mutation - E484 - that could reduce some of the effectiveness of the vaccines.

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It was announced on Sunday that six new variant cases - three in England and three in Scotland - had been found through testing.

Health officials have been able to contact all but one of these people. The whereabouts of the remaining individual is unknown as they did not complete their test registration card.

It has prompted an appeal for anyone without a result from a test on 12 or 13 February to come forward immediately by calling 119.

The health secretary has denied that delays in imposing quarantine hotel measures on travellers to the UK put lives at risk, as officials continue to seek the individual.

Mr Hancock said there was "no evidence" the infected person had not followed home quarantine rules.

Earlier, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK has "one of the toughest border regimes anywhere in the world for stopping people coming in to this country who may have variants of concern".

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BBC HEADROOM: Your mental health toolkit - Mindful tips, mood mixes and motivation
NADIYA: ANXIETY AND ME: Nadiya Hussain sets out to find the cause of her anxiety, exploring the most effective, available treatments

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2021-03-01 20:37:02Z
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Covid vaccines cut risk of serious illness by 80% - BBC News

A single shot of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid jab reduces the chance of needing hospital treatment by more than 80%, an analysis in England shows.

The Public Health England data showed the effect kicked in three to four weeks after vaccination.

It was based on people aged over 80 who were the first to receive the jab.

Government scientists hailed the result, but stressed that two doses were needed for the best protection.

It comes after similar findings were published by Scottish health authorities last week, which they hailed as "spectacular".

When will it be my turn to be vaccinated?

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told a Downing Street briefing on Monday the latest vaccine results were "very strong".

He added: "They may also help to explain why the number of Covid admissions to intensive care units among people over 80 in the UK have dropped to single figures in the last couple of weeks."

But he said it was "absolutely critical" that second doses "are still part of the course of immunisation against Covid-19 and no less important".

More than 20 million people in the UK have had their first dose of a vaccine - over a third of the adult population.

Meanwhile, another 104 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus have been reported, and a further 5,455 new cases, according to the latest figures.

The data also showed vaccination cuts the risk of people over 70 developing any Covid symptoms by around 60%, three weeks after an initial dose.

Prof Van-Tam said the decision to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to older people was "clearly vindicated".

Some European nations have refused to give it to the over 65s because data from the trials was mainly on its effect among younger adults.

Prof Van-Tam said the judgement made by the UK authorities was that it was simply "not plausible" the vaccine would only work on younger adults. He said other countries would doubtless be "very interested" in the data coming out of the UK.

And he added: "It shows us how - if we are patient... the vaccine programme is going to take us into a very different world in the next few months."

Dr Mary Ramsay, Public Health England's head of immunisation, said there was growing evidence that the vaccines were working to reduce infections and save lives.

"While there remains much more data to follow, this is encouraging and we are increasingly confident that vaccines are making a real difference," she said.

However, more evidence is needed to know how well the vaccines protect against the Brazil variant that has recently been identified in the UK.

This variant has a mutation - E484 - that could reduce some of the effectiveness of the vaccines.

It was announced on Sunday that six new variant cases - three in England and three in Scotland - had been found through testing.

Health officials have been able to contact all but one of these people. The whereabouts of the remaining individual is unknown as they did not complete their test registration card.

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2021-03-01 19:43:45Z
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Brazil virus variant found to evade natural immunity - Financial Times

The P.1 Covid-19 variant that originated in Brazil and has spread to more than 25 countries is around twice as transmissible as some other strains and is more likely to evade the natural immunity people usually develop from prior infection, according to a new international study.

The research, conducted by a UK-Brazilian team of researchers from institutions including Oxford university, Imperial College London, the University of São Paulo, found that the P.1 variant was between 1.4 and 2.2 times more transmissible than other variants circulating in Brazil.

It was also “able to evade 25-61 per cent of protective immunity elicited by previous infection” with any earlier variant, the researchers found, in a sign that current vaccines could also be less effective against it.

International concern about the P.1 variant has escalated recently, with more than 25 countries detecting the variant, including Belgium, Sweden and the UK, which has identified six cases.

The scientists are expected to release a paper describing the research on Tuesday. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.

Dr Nuno Faria, associate professor at Oxford university and lead author on the study, said, “we can confidently say that P.1 has altered the epidemiological characteristics of the virus in Manaus but whether that is true in other settings we don’t yet know.”

He added, “we have no evidence so far that P.1 won’t respond to vaccines, at least for preventing serious disease.”

Which of the two variants [B.1.1.7 and P.1] was more transmissible “is a really important question that needs to be addressed”, Faria said.

The researchers have dated the emergence of the P.1 variant to November 6, 2020, around one month before cases began to surge for a second time in the Brazilian city of Manaus. They found that the proportion of cases classified as P.1 in Manaus increased from zero to 87 per cent in the space of 7 weeks.

The paper concluded: “Our results further show that natural immunity waning alone is unlikely to explain the observed dynamics in Manaus, with support for P.1 possessing altered epidemiological characteristics.”

“Studies to evaluate real-world vaccine efficacy in response to P.1 are urgently needed,” it added.

The researchers also found that infections were 10 to 80 per cent more likely to result in death in Manaus after the emergence of P.1. However, the authors cautioned that it was not possible to determine whether this meant the variant was more lethal or whether it was a result of increased strain on the city’s healthcare system, or a combination of both.

The P.1 variant has over 17 mutations, which alter its genetic sequence from the virus originally identified in Wuhan, including 3 key changes to the spike protein that it uses to enter human cells.

Researchers in Brazil have been using genetic sequencing technology developed by Oxford Nanopore in the UK to identify and track the variant. The technology was first used in Brazil during the Zika outbreak in 2015.

Dr Leila Luheshi, director of applied and clinical markets at Oxford Nanopore, told the Financial Times that while the B.1.1.7 variant in the UK has similar properties of high transmissibility to P.1 — it is thought to be around 1.5 times as transmissible as variants that preceded it — there was no evidence to date that it evaded past natural immunity in the same way. Studies so far have also shown that current vaccines retain their efficacy against B.1.1.7.

Luheshi said that the concern with P.1 is that “because it has these mutations around the spike . . . the hypothesis is that the vaccine will be less effective.” But she added that there is not yet definitive evidence to support this theory.

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2021-03-01 19:29:51Z
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Brazil virus variant found to evade natural immunity - Financial Times

International concern about the P.1 variant has escalated recently, with more than 25 countries detecting the variant, including Belgium, Sweden and the UK, which has identified six cases.

The scientists are expected to release a paper describing the research on Tuesday. Dr Nuno Faria, the lead author, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.

“Studies to evaluate real-world vaccine efficacy in response to P.1 are urgently needed,” it added.

The P.1 variant has over 17 mutations, which alter its genetic sequence from the virus originally identified in Wuhan, including 3 key changes to the spike protein that it uses to enter human cells.

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2021-03-01 18:00:13Z
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COVID-19: Single AstraZeneca or Pfizer dose 80% effective at preventing hospitalisations in over 80s - Sky News

A single shot of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines is more than 80% effective at preventing hospitalisation among the over 80s, the health secretary has said.

Speaking at a Downing Street news conference, Matt Hancock hailed "exciting new data" showing the effectiveness of the two COVID-19 jabs.

According to a pre-print study from Public Health England:

The vaccines are more than 80% effective at preventing hospitalisations in over 80s after one dose
Protection against symptomatic COVID in those over 70, four weeks after the first jab, ranged between 57-61% for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 60-73% for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine
For the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, there is evidence it leads to an 83% reduction in deaths from the virus.

Mr Hancock said the fact that the number of hospital admissions was falling faster than that of cases - particularly among the older age groups who were given a jab first - "is a sign that the vaccine is working".

The rate of decline in deaths among the older age groups is also faster than in the under 80s, the health secretary said.

"This shows, in the real world, across the UK right now that the vaccine is helping both to protect the NHS and to save lives," he declared.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, one of England's deputy chief medical officers, said the data "gives us those first glimpses of how, if we are patient, and we give this vaccine programme time to have its full effect, it is going to hopefully take us into a very different world in the next few months".

He said that "in time", he expected the UK's vaccine rollout to lower levels of the virus, reduce the likelihood of infections affecting the older and more vulnerable and result in milder cases for people in those groups.

But while Professor Van-Tam said "there's a lot to look forwards to", the "problem isn't fixed yet".

"It's very tempting to just go, 'Right, we've seen the results, that means the problem is fixed'," he said.

"The problem isn't fixed yet but we definitely have identified a way of fixing the problem and the early data show us how to do that and where to advance from here."

It comes after six cases of a COVID-19 "variant of concern" from Brazil were detected in the United Kingdom.

Three cases of the P.1 coronavirus variant have been confirmed in England and three in Scotland, Public Health England said.

Two of the cases in England come from a household in South Gloucestershire, where one person returned from Brazil in mid-February, before hotel quarantine measures were introduced.

The third case is unlinked and the whereabouts of the individual unknown, as they did not complete their test registration card.

The three Scottish cases were found in asymptomatic passengers who flew into Aberdeen on the BA1312 flight from London Heathrow on Friday.

They tested positive while self-isolating and contact tracing of other passengers on the flight is currently ongoing.

The Scottish government said there was "no reason to believe" the P.1 variant is in circulation in Scotland.

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2021-03-01 17:48:45Z
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Senin, 01 Maret 2021

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