The UK has recorded 1,243 more Covid deaths - the second highest daily total on this measure. (See 5.12pm.) Priti Patel, the home secretary, announced the figure at a press conference where she twice dodged questions about why the current lockdown is less strict than last spring’s, even though the new variant of coronavirus poses a much greater risk because it is much more transmissible. Patel claimed the current rules were “tough enough”. But she also said that they were being kept under “constant review” and that conversations were going on within government about whether they might need to be tightened. Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs Council, told the press conference that officers will not “linger” trying to encourage the public to obey lockdown rules. He also gave examples of recent breaches including a boat party in Hertfordshire with more than 40 people who had each paid £30 each for a ticket, and a minibus full of people from different households travelling from Cheltenham into Wales for a walk. In an article this morning Dame Cressida Dick, the Met police commissioner, said that people who break lockdown rules were now “increasingly likely to face fines”. (See 9.05am.) Hewitt has admitted that Derbyshire police officers made a mistake when they fined two women for going for a walk five miles from home. Asked about the case, he said the police were having to deal with “highly unusual” health regulations and that they were dealing with the public on “hundreds of thousands” of occasions. He went on: Sometimes mistakes will be made, but we always have looked at those, we have looked at them quickly, we have dealt with the members of the public concerned and we have said when we have got something wrong. The fines have now been rescinded. Asked about the same case, Patel said the police were “outstanding”, but she also pointed out that those fines have been withdrawn. Hewitt has indicated that he is not in favour of setting an exact distance people are allowed to travel when exercising away from home under the Covid regulations. Earlier the Met commissioner suggested the exercise guidance should be clarified. (See 10.04am.) But at the press conference Hewitt said: If you tried to make a definition for every possible circumstance that would be really challenging. I don’t think we are in a position where we want to set a particular distance because how would - if a police officer stopped somebody - [they] prove that a person is within or outside that distance. At the press conference Patel defended Boris Johnson’s decision to go on a bike ride seven miles from his No 10 home on Sunday, but she also stressed the importance of people staying local. MPs have been told that hospitals might not the Covid pressure on hospitals in England may not reach its peak until February. (See 3.37pm.) Marcus Rashford has warned that “something is going wrong” with free school meal delivery during lockdown, after he held talks with the school catering company at the centre of a row over inadequate free school meal (FSM) parcels. Experts are calling on the UK government to halt or pause its mass testing programme for people without symptoms in care homes, schools, communities and potentially at home, warning that the lateral flow devices it has bought are inaccurate and can do more harm than good. Military helicopters could be used within days to airlift coronavirus patients from the Isle of Wight, the island’s medical director has said, after an “astronomical” rise in infections fuelled by mixing and visitors over Christmas. The number of prisoners in England and Wales who have tested positive for coronavirus and died has risen by 50% in a month as cases behind bars surge. Public Health England is to step up its surveillance of a highly transmissible variant of coronavirus that arrived in the UK after fuelling a surge in the number of cases in South Africa. International travellers will need to present a negative Covid-19 test to enter England from 4am on Friday. The number of students in state schools in England plummeted in the week before Christmas, government data shows. The Chinese government has accused Boris Johnson of “groundless conjecture” after the prime minister suggested coronavirus could have spread from people grinding up the scales of pangolins. (See 4.50pm.) China’s treatment of the Uighur people amounts to torture, the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said as he set out measures designed to ensure no companies allow the use of forced labour from Xinjiang province in their supply chain. That’s all from me for today. But our coverage continues on our global coronavirus blog. It’s here.