UK Covid live: Boris Johnson to give briefing on winter plan after vaccine boosters announced

Boris Johnson is about to hold a press conference in Downing Street about the autumn and winter Covid plan. He will be with Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, its chief scientific adviser.

Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s story about the plan.

In the Commons Sajid Javid also said that no decision has yet been taken as to whether pupils in England will have to continue undergoing regular testing. He was responding to a question from his fellow Conservative Mark Harper, chair of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group, who said children without symptoms should not be subject to regular testing.

In the Commons earlier Sajid Javid, the health secretary, implied that PCR tests for fully vaccinated travellers will be replaced with lateral flow tests.

The Conservative MP Huw Merriman asked him:

Will he entertain the idea of moving to lateral flow tests, which are cheaper, and then only the small proportion of positive cases will then need to take up a PCR test?

Referring to a statement that Grant Shapps is due to make soon about changes to the Covid travel rules, Javid replied:

I don’t want to pre-empt the statement by the transport secretary but I believe that when he makes that statement, he will be pleased.

In his opening statement to MPs, Sajid Javid said: “Whilst we’re not going ahead with mandatory vaccine-only Covid-status certification [aka vaccine passports] now, we will be holding that power in reserve.”

But the autumn and winter plan (pdf) suggests that vaccine passports may be more probable than Javid’s words implied. While stressing that they are just a plan B contingency at this point, it suggests that businesses that might be affected should started making plans for their possible introduction. It says:

Under Plan B, the government expects to introduce mandatory vaccine certification in a limited number of settings, with specific characteristics. The government hopes that it would not be necessary to mandate vaccine certification more widely than these settings, though this cannot be entirely ruled out.

If Plan B is implemented, it could be at short notice in response to concerning data. Therefore, in order to help businesses prepare their own contingency plans, the government will shortly publish more detail about the proposed certification regime that would be introduced as part of plan B. The government would seek to give businesses at least one week’s notice before mandatory vaccine certification came into force.

The document includes a full half page citing evidence to support the case for Covid passports (on page 24).

The plan reveals that if the government does adopt this scheme, the NHS Covid pass, a feature on the NHS app, will effectively become the Covid passport. At the moment the NHS Covid pass allows people to either show either that they have been fully vaccinated, or that they have had a recent negative test. Under plan B the Covid pass would only show proof of vaccination.

And it sets out the venues that might be covered by a Covid passport: not just nightclubs (as originally proposed by Boris Johnson in July), but indoor venues with more than 500 people in close proximity, outdoor venues with more than 4,000 people in close proximity and any setting with more than 10,000 people. (These are almost exactly the same criteria as apply in Scotland, where Covid passports have already been announced, although the Scots are also mandating them for sexual entertainment venues too.)

At the No 10 lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman said there was no specific metric for triggering when so-called plan B measures in the winter plan.

Asked whether a new variant, or a certain number of cases per week, would make the government revert to plan B, the spokesman said:

No. As we did with the road map, we never looked to one single metric to decide when to act.

It is important to take a holistic approach and consider a range of data.

Obviously the number of patients in hospital is an important factor, as is the interaction with other indicators, such as the rate of increase in hospitalisations, things like the ratio of cases to hospitalisations, and the trajectory of new cases.

All of those sort of things would need to be factored in alongside vaccine effectiveness, waning immunity, etc.

It is right to look at a range of metrics and not be overly prescriptive and consider the latest advice we are getting from experts, like Prof Whitty and others.

Downing Street has sent journalists its readout from this morning’s cabinet meeting. This is what is says about what Boris Johnson told his ministers about Covid.

The PM said that we must not be complacent as we approach what could be a challenging autumn and winter and that this plan is informed by the latest scientific advice on controlling the virus.

The PM added that since we moved to step four in July, there has been huge progress, and the public have been learning to live with the virus without significant restrictions on businesses and individual freedoms. The PM stressed his desire to see this continue to bolster our vaccine programme as the first line of defence, supported by testing, public health advice, and a variant surveillance system.

The readout also shows that concerns about supply shortages were discussed at cabinet today. Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, gave an update on the problem, and Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, gave details of how driving tests for HGV drivers are being simplified to enable more to be carried out every year.

Brexit is widely seen as contributing to the problem in the UK, but ministers insist that leaving the EU is not to blame and that the shortage of lorry drivers in the UK is part of a Europe-wide problem caused by Covid. The No 10 readout just refers to “HGV driver shortages which have been exacerbated by the pandemic”.

The government’s autumn and winter Covid plan (pdf) says there is “significant uncertainty” about what will happen later this year and says there is a “plausible” risk of cases rising to an extent that would place the NHS under “unsustainable pressure”. Here is an extract.

Sage and SPI-M [Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling] modellers now deem the most pessimistic scenarios in the step 4 modelling to be unlikely, except in the case of a new dangerous variant of concern or significant waning immunity. However, there remains considerable uncertainty and scenarios which place the NHS under extreme and unsustainable pressure remain plausible. As a result, the government must continue to monitor the data and prepare contingencies.

The government has released a series of documents from its Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) relating to today’s announcement, including minutes (pdf) from a Sage meeting last Thursday. Sage said the pandemic was entering “a period of uncertainty” and it stressed the importance “acting early” if cases rise, to stop the epidemic growing. It said:

Sage noted that the epidemic is entering a period of uncertainty. Key uncertainties include the potential impact of any waning of immunity and any significant changes in contact patterns associated with increased attendance at workplaces and reopening of education settings. It will take several weeks to be able to understand the full impact of any such changes.

Hospital admissions will continue to be a critical metric to assess the trajectory of the epidemic, particularly in the elderly. Increasing cases remain the earliest warning sign that hospital admissions are likely to rise. Other early warning signals would be a change in the relationship between cases and hospital admissions, or a change in the pattern of admissions to hospital of those who are fully vaccinated.

Sage reiterated the importance of acting early to slow a growing epidemic. Early, “low-cost” interventions may reduce need for more disruptive measures and avoid an unacceptable level of hospitalisations. Late action is likely to require harder measures.

Sage also says in the minutes that there is “evidence from real-world data in England of waning of vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease from approximately 10 weeks after second dose”, although it stresses that protection against hospitalisation and death remains high for at least 20 weeks.