A senior health official has said that, when the English lockdown ends on 2 December, restrictions will have to be tighter than they were before. The government is planning on the basis that after that date England will return to the three-tier system in place before the lockdown started. At a news conference in Downing Street, where she was speaking alongside Matt Hancock, health secretary, Dr Susan Hopkins, a deputy director of Public Health England and medical adviser to NHS test and trace, said that in December the three-tier system in England would have to be strengthened. The pre-lockdown version was not tough enough, she suggested. (See 5.52pm. Hopkins has said that, if the lockdown is working, coronavirus cases in England should start declining this week. Speaking at the press conference she said: We expect if the lockdown is working ... that we will start to see cases decline over the next week. We expect it will be longer to see hospital admissions, another week or so, but I think as long as we start seeing cases decline then we can start making a judgment about what are the right decisions that we make and what the opening up decisions that happen on 2 December. Hancock said that over the last week UK Covid case numbers have been going up, rising from an average of 22,443 per day a week ago to 25,329 per day now. (See 5.08pm.) Today’s figures have still not yet been posted on the government’s dashboard.
Britain has rapidly secured a deal for an initial 5m doses of a new US vaccine which has nearly 95% effectiveness in interim results, after fears earlier that the UK had missed out on supplies. A string of Conservative MPs are self-isolating following a meeting in Downing Street that has forced Boris Johnson to spend a potentially crucial week holed up inside No 10. The former prime minister Gordon Brown has said that unless the government comes up with an immediate anti-poverty programme it will face a rebellion from a deeply divided Britain. Hull has been “forgotten” by central government as the city’s coronavirus cases have increased at an “astonishing and terrifying rate” to become the highest in England, its council leader has said. The government’s £100bn Operation Moonshot mass Covid testing scheme is like “building a Channel tunnel without asking civil engineers to look at the plans”, experts have warned. Brexit negotiations on a trade deal resume in a crucial week, as it emerged talks on the issue of EU access to British fishing waters have not progressed since the summer. That’s all from me for today. But our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog. It’s here.