Portrait of the week: Face masks in schools, vegan nuggets in Burger King and Big Ben bongs again

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The warmest New Year’s Day on record saw a temperature of 16.3˚C (61.3˚F) in St James’s Park, London. A restored Big Ben rang in the new year for the first time in four years. Boris Johnson,the Prime Minister, announced he would soldier on with Plan B against coronavirus. The government, he said, had identified 100,000 critical workers to receive daily lateral flow tests. Some people would be treated at home in 2,500 ‘virtual beds’. Covid was widespread, thanks to the Omicron variant. In the seven days up to the beginning of this week, 911 people had died with coronavirus (compared with 858 in a week a month earlier), bringing total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 148,778. Hospitals were stretched by staff absence, but in London Covid hospitalisations fell. Children in secondary schools were obliged to wear face coverings in class. Interest rates were at 0.25 per cent after the Bank of England had raised them from 0.1