Sir Keir Starmer won’t be doing PMQs tomorrow, Labour has said, because he is still waiting for the results of the family Covid test. A spokesman said:
Keir Starmer is still awaiting the test result for a member of his family. He is therefore remaining in self-isolation and will not participate in prime minister’s questions tomorrow. Angela Rayner, deputy leader and shadow first secretary of state, will be taking his place. We have informed Number 10.
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Why is the government claiming surplus testing capacity when people can’t get tests?
Here is a good question from below the line.
It is true that the number of people being tested on any given day has always been lower than the figure given for capacity on that day. Partly that’s just a function of the maths; the system cannot carry out more tests than it is capable of carrying out. But at times the gap between the two numbers has been huge and, if people are unable to access tests, any notional surplus capacity is actually bogus. If the capacity cannot be used to provide tests where they are needed, it might as well not be there.
The government has been a victim of its own spin. In early May Boris Johnson announced that, by the end of the month, the government would get testing up to 200,000 a day. Subsequently No 10 said this promise related to testing capacity, not tests actually carried out, and around this time the government started producing daily testing capacity figures that included antigen tests (that show whether you have got coronavirus) and antibody tests (that show whether you have had it). This was misleading; antibody tests are useful, but they don’t help the teacher with a cough who needs to know whether it is safe to go back to work. At the end of May the government claimed it had met its 200,000 per day target – even though only 127,722 antigen tests had been carried on the relevant day. To justify its claim, the government counted extra antigen testing capacity, plus the availability of 40,000 antibody tests.
The previous month Matt Hancock set a target of getting testing up to 100,000 a day by the end of April. He failed to achieve that in any proper sense, but he claimed to have reached his goal by including in the count a large batch of home testing kits that had been sent out just before the deadline but not yet processed. Subsequent figures showed that almost half home testing kits were never returned, or were sent back void.
In both cases spin trumped honesty. Ministers got a short presentational win. But they ended up undermining trust in the system because the positive headlines were based on a misuse of statistics.
More recently the government has started to make its testing capacity figures more honest. It has not abandoned the total testing capacity figure (which rescued Johnson at the end of May). But it has started publishing on its daily dashboard a testing capacity figure for pillars 1 and 2 (ie, just for antigen tests, and excluding antibody tests) and capacity by this measure is only just ahead of tests carried out, which is what you would expect from a system working flat out.
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Welsh government providing 5,000 extra hospital beds for further Covid waves
There will be an extra 5,000 hospital beds in Wales to cope with any fresh waves of coronavirus, the Welsh government has announced. Welsh health minister Vaughan Gething said:
The position remains precarious. The challenges this winter will be truly extraordinary. We must be prepared for the worst.
The Welsh government’s winter protection plan, published on Tuesday, says 5,000 beds are available to ensure health boards are able to manage future waves of Covid-19 and any potential spike in emergency admissions.
This has been achieved by retaining a range of field hospitals, new hospital facilities and additional bed capacity created in existing hospital sites.
The government wants 75% of people at risk, such as those with clinical conditions, and health and social workers, to receive the flu vaccine. It has 160m PPE items in stock, with orders placed for more than 300 million further items.
Gething has been questioned in the Welsh parliament about the accidental release online by Public Health Wales (PHW) of the details of more than 18,000 Welsh people who tested positive for coronavirus. (See 9.56am) PHW only revealed the error on Monday. Earlier the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, said he only heard about it on Monday. Gething said he knew of it on 3 September.
The two main political stories dominating the agenda at Westminster – and on this blog – are coronavirus and Brexit, but it is not often they converge quite like this.
Covid hospital admissions and ventilation cases rising in England, figures show
The figure on the summary page of the UK government’s coronavirus dashboard for hospital admissions has not been updated since 2 September (because Scotland’s data only comes out weekly) but within the healthcare page there are statistics showing hospital admissions, hospital numbers and mechanical ventilation patients for England are all going up. Here are the key points.
- The daily total for Covid patients being admitted to hospital in England has now passed 150. On 13 September, the most recent day for which a figure is available, it was 153. The previous day it was 143. Only a week ago the numbers were in double figures. The total has not been as high as 150 since early July. This is from John Roberts, a contributor to the work of the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group, earlier today.
- The total number of coronavirus patients in hospital in England has now reached 866. That is the figure for 15 September, up from 782 the previous day. It has not been as high as this since late July.
- The number of hospital patients in England receiving mechanical ventilation has now passed 100 again. Today’s figure is 101. It has not been this high since late July.
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UK records 3,105 more coronavirus cases as recent sharp increase maintained
And the UK government has just updated the daily figures on its coronavirus dashboard. Here are the main figures.
- The daily number of coronavirus cases has risen above 3,000 again. Today’s count is 3,105, up from 2,621 yesterday. Today’s total is lower than was recorded at the end of last week, but it is still only the fourth time the daily total has been above 3,000 since the end of May. The recent trend – a sharp increase – is being maintained.
- The UK has recorded 27 more coronavirus deaths. This is the highest daily recorded total for a week. It takes the headline total to 41,664, but this figure only records people who have died within 28 days of a coronavirus test, and so it significantly understates the true number of coronavirus deaths in the UK. Taking into account all deaths where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate, there have been more than 57,400 UK deaths.
Turning back to Brexit for a moment, Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt says Boris Johnson has had a friendly meeting with Sir Bob Neill, the Conservative MP who is tabling a relative amendment that would ensure MPs had a vote on any government decision to use the powers in the internal market bill to override the withdrawal agreement.