Social distancing between family and friends is to be left up to “personal choice” from next week and gatherings of six people from different households will be allowed indoors again, under further lockdown easing measures for England announced by Boris Johnson at a No 10 press conference. Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, said there was some worry in government about the main Indian variant, B16172, because it may be more transmissible than the dominant one in the UK, B117 (the so-called Kent variant). At the start of the press conference he showed this slide illustrating how cases of B16172 have more than doubled in a week.
Whitty said that new variants accounted for less than 5% of coronavirus cases in the UK (other than B117, which is now dominant and accounts for the vast majority of cases), but he said the Indian one was “slightly concerning”. He said: Most of [the variants] are currently relatively stable and not increasing at a great rate. The one that is slightly concerning in terms of increasing as a proportion is the variant which has been described from India. That does appear to be increasing but from very low levels over the last two weeks. Asked if spread of the Indian variant could lead to another lockdown, he said: What we know is, with all the variants, that things can come out of a blue sky and you’re not expecting it and then something happens. That happened, obviously, with the B117 [the Kent/UK variant] and that has happened to India with this variant as well. So I think it very imprudent to say [another lockdown] is impossible. At this point in time our view is this is a highly transmissible variant, at least as transmissible as the B117 variant. It is possible it is more transmissible, but we will have to see. At this point in time our view is it is less likely to be able to escape vaccination than some of the other variants, particularly the South African one, but the data are not properly in there so I think we need to be cautious until we’ve seen clear data that give us an answer one way or the other. Johnson described as “complete nonsense” claims that the government was legislating to require people to produce photo ID at polling stations to suppress the anti-Tory vote. When this was put to him, he replied: I would say that was complete nonsense and what we want to do is to protect democracy, the transparency and the integrity of the electoral process, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask first-time voters to produce some evidence of identity. Johnson appeared to mis-speak, because the government plans will apply to all voters, not just first-time voters. Boris Johnson is under investigation over who paid for his Caribbean holiday with Carrie Symonds during Christmas 2019. Keir Starmer has moved to ease Labour party tensions with an address to staff and shadow cabinet members praising his deputy, Angela Rayner, after a bitter briefing war. That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.