Here are the key coronavirus updates from the last 24 hours.

  • There have been 1,488 new coronavirus cases recorded in the North-East and North Yorkshire since Tuesday. The Government said a further 310 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Wednesday. This brings the UK total to 45,675. The Government said that, as of 9am on Wednesday, there had been a further 24,701 lab-confirmed cases of covid in the UK. It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 942,275. Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 61,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
  • North Yorkshire’s Tier 1 status is “hanging by a thread”, a local council chief has warned, with a decision on whether to impose tougher restrictions possibly coming as soon as this week. Richard Webb, North Yorkshire County Council’s corporate director for Health and Adult Services, told a meeting of the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum that the situation was on a “knife-edge”. Mr Webb said it would be better for the region to remain in Tier 1 but the were worrying trends in parts of North Yorkshire as neighbouring West Yorkshire looks likely to join South Yorkshire in Tier 3 restrictions.
  • North-East leaders are still waiting for D-Day talks after an late-night email put them on notice of the region potentially being moved to Tier 3. Gateshead Council leader Martin Gannon said the region’s seven authorities are yet to receive word on when a meeting with central Government which could see the current Tier 2 status surpassed by the strictest measures. On Monday North-East leaders warned that they will “resist any attempt” to impose Tier 3 lockdown measures on the region.
  • A serving police community support officer has died after testing positive for coronavirus, his force has said. Northumbria Police paid tribute to Graham Wesley Dinning, known as Wez, who was 48 and worked on Wearside. The force said: “It is with great sadness that Northumbria Police can confirm a serving police community support officer has died. Graham Wesley Dinning, who was known to his colleagues and friends as Wez, tested positive for Covid-19 on October 14 and had been self-isolating at home. However, his condition worsened and he tragically passed away.”
  • Cathie Russell, co-founder of Care Home Relatives Scotland, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme: “I haven’t actually been in my mum’s care home since 17th March and all of these cases all happened long after relatives were barred out of care homes altogether. I was quite shocked when I’ve seen the level of discharges that there had been from hospitals to care homes and I just don’t think the care home sector was resourced to deal with that amount of flow. I think the care homes quite frankly were dumped on by the NHS, who were better resourced than they were.
  • Hospitals in some parts of the country, including Liverpool, Lancashire and Nottingham, are now treating more Covid patients than at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in April, the NHS in England said. Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for the NHS in England, said: “Coronavirus cases and hospitalised patients are rising sharply and in some parts of the country including Liverpool, Lancashire and Nottingham hospitals are now treating more Covid patients than at the peak of the pandemic in April.
  • Prof Neil Ferguson, the scientist whose modelling prompted the UK-wide lockdown in March, told the PA news agency that measures in Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas are “unlikely to cause daily cases and deaths to fall rapidly”. He said that modelling suggests that this could leave the country with “high levels” of Covid cases, demand on health care and deaths “until spring 2021. Prof Ferguson, from Imperial College London, said: “The concern at the moment is that even if the measures adopted in Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas slow spread in the next few weeks, they are unlikely to cause daily cases and deaths to fall rapidly."
  • Nicola Sturgeon said the Public Health Scotland report on care homes concludes that allowing for other factors, such as the size of a care home, “hospital discharges were not found to have contributed to a significantly higher risk of an outbreak”. Quoting directly from the report, the First Minister said: “The analysis does not find statistical evidence that hospital discharges of any kind were associated with care home outbreaks.”
  • Covid-19 hospital admissions for working age adults are particularly high among healthcare staff and their families, a new study has found. They accounted for a sixth of admissions among those aged 18 to 65. Although hospital admissions were low in this age group, the research authors said the risk for healthcare workers and their families is higher compared with other working age adults. Scientists from the University of Glasgow and Public Health Scotland found the risk is higher for those with “front door” roles – such as paramedics and A&E medics.
  • The second wave of coronavirus in England has reached a “critical stage”, with infections doubling approximately every nine days, experts have said. Researchers say they are detecting early signs areas that previously had low rates of infection are following trends observed in the country’s worst-affected regions. They add that there has to be change before Christmas, and if more stringent measures are to be implemented, it needs to be sooner rather than later as the current measures are “not sufficient”. The interim data from round six of the React study uses data and swab results from 86,000 people between October 16-25, and estimates there are around 96,000 new infections per day.