UK Covid live: health minister says more cases of Omicron expected to be confirmed in England

Edward Argar, the health minister for England, was doing his best to quash alarmism in his morning interviews this morning. Here are some of the key points he made.

• Argar said that he did not expect Covid regulations for England to tighten in the next three weeks beyond what was announced by Boris Johnson on Saturday. Asked if he expected further restrictions over that period, Argar replied: “It’s not something I’m anticipating.” Johnson has said the rules will be reviewed the weekend before Christmas. Argar said he was “looking forward to a Christmas spent with family and friends”.

• He defended the decision not to make mask wearing compulsory in hospitality venues in England. Asked to explain why they were not included in the new rules, as shops are, he replied:

It’s in the nature of the venue. In a pub, you’re drinking. You can’t do that if you’re wearing a mask. And in restaurants, you’re normally seated at your table to give your order, you stay at your table with your group of friends or your partner or whoever you’re there with, and similarly in pubs you are normally – even when you’re standing up rather than sitting down – you’re drinking.

And therefore it’s in the nature of the hospitality industry, the hospitality trade. And therefore, we think this is a proportionate and reasonable way to put in a precaution to give us that time to better understand this variant by slowing down the seeding and the spreading of it.

Labour has implied that mask-wearing should be compulsory in hospitality venues. Angela Rayner, the deputy party leader, told Sky News this morning:

We think that in hospitality settings that people should be wearing a mask … Especially if you’re moving around the pub, people should be wearing their masks in hospitality settings. If you’re [in] an indoor setting, there’s no distinction between a pub, sitting in a pub, or sitting on a train, or sitting in a hospital. It’s still a venue that’s indoors and we should be taking the necessary measures to protect people around us.

• Argar said that he was confident test and trace would be able to meet the challenge posed by the Omicron variant. He said:

We’re confident that test and trace can meet this challenge.

And just by way of an example, I think 91% of contacts, where they’re given by someone who tests positive at the moment, are being reached and contacted within the appropriate time. So it has come a long, long way from when it was first set up. And I’m confident it will be able to scale up and meet the challenge.

The government has announced that, in England, it will be compulsory to wear masks in shops and on public transport from tomorrow. This will move England closer to the situation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where rules on mask wearing have constitently been tougher than in England.

But, as the Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith points out, in England there are plenty of venues where masks remain voluntary.

This morning Angela Rayner, the Labour deputy leader, said the UK government should be doing more to encourage mask-wearing in England. She told:

We think we should be encouraging people to wear masks when we’re all mixing indoors, as much as possible.

So we would recommend that people do wear masks when they’re out and about, specially when they’re moving around venues.

The prime minister unfortunately has undermined those messages in recent weeks, but wearing a mask can be a very protective way of supporting people in stopping the virus being able to spread as quickly.

John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, told the BBC this morning that some of the six confirmed Omicron cases in Scotland are people who have not been travelling, which means the variant is spreading in the community. Swinney said:

We obviously have some travel history on some of the cases, I don’t have all of that detail available to me at this stage, but on some of the cases we are aware that there is no travel history involved on some of the cases.

So what that tells us is that there must be a degree of community transmission of this particular strain of the virus in the absence of direct travel connection for some of the cases in the southern African area.

So that obviously opens up further challenges for us in terms of interrupting the spread of this particular strain of the virus and that will be the focus of the contact tracing operation that is under way already.

A person infected with the Omicron variant in Essex is “well” and isolating with their family, the region’s top public health official has said. Essex’s director of public health, Dr Michael Gogarty, told BBC Breakfast:

Most importantly with the confirmed case is that they are well, they are isolating with their family. When I say that they are well, I mean they are not seriously ill. They have some symptoms but they do not require hospitalisation.

Good morning. So far there have been only three confirmed cases of the new Omicron variant found in England. But this morning the Scottish government announced that it has six confirmed cases, and Edward Argar, the UK government health minister (which means health minister for England, in practice) told the Today programme that more cases will be confirmed south of the border. Asked if he was expecting more cases to be confirmed in England, he said yes. He went on:

We’ve seen three confirmed cases in England. But I think we’ve been clear since we first knew about this new variant that we would expect to see the number of cases rise. And I think what we’re seeing in Scotland reflects that. That’s in the nature of the virus, and the likely – not certain but likely – increased transmissibility of this variant.

According to Harry Cole in the Sun, government sources say there are 75 “probable” case of Omicron in the UK – with possibly more than 150 more.

Here are the main UK Covid developments around this morning.

• Steve Baker, deputy chair of the Tory lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group, has criticised rules saying school pupils, like other people, who are close contacts of someone testing positive with the Omicron variant will have to isolate for 10 days. He told the Telegraph this will “cause chaos including collateral harms like damage to children’s education”.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.30am: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, holds a Covid briefing with Scotland’s chief medical officer, Gregor Smith.

11am: Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, gives a speech on standards in public life. As my colleague Peter Walker reports, ministers would be barred from lobbying or other paid work connected to their government roles for five years after they leave office under Labour’s plans.

11.30am: Downing Street holds its lobby briefing.

12pm: Sturgeon is due to give her speech to the SNP’s online conference.

2pm: The Commons standards committee publishes its report proposing changes to the code of conduct for MPs.

After 3.30pm: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is expected to give a statement to MPs on Covid.

At some point today we are also expecting the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization to make an announcement about extending the booster programme.

I will be mostly looking at UK Covid developments today, but I will covering non-Covid politics too. For global Covid developments, do read our global live blog.

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