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NHS staff in England will have to be fully vaccinated against Covid by the spring. Britain had ordered 250,000 courses of a Pfizer antiviral pill available from early 2022 shown to cut the risk of hospitalisation or death from Covid by 89 per cent. Britain approved another antiviral pill, developed by Merck, and ordered 480,000 courses. In the seven days up to the beginning of this week, 1,185 people had died with coronavirus, bringing the total of deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 141,743. (In the previous week deaths had numbered 1,097.) Numbers remaining in hospital stayed at about 9,000. Rolls-Royce gained the backing of private investors and the government to develop small modular reactors to produce nuclear energy. Lionel Blair, the dancer and television performer, died aged 92.
Stephen Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, expressed regret in parliament that the government had the week before supported a proposal to block, until a review of the standards system had been carried out, the suspension of Owen Paterson after a finding by the parliamentary standards commissioner that he had exercised ‘paid advocacy’.
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