Here's the latest from the Covid pandemic, including news that one of seven mass vaccination centres will be here in the North-East:

  • The Government’s death figures continue to be affected by a lag in the publication of recent data and will contain some deaths that took place over the Christmas and New Year period that have only just been reported. The Government also said that, as of 9am on Wednesday, there had been a further 62,322 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK. It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 2,836,801.
  • The Government said a further 1,041 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Wednesday – the highest daily reported total since April 21. It brings the UK total to 77,346. 
  • A breakdown of the number of cases in our region: Darlington: 4,859, was 4,763; County Durham: 26,651, was 26,299; Hartlepool: 6,122, was 5,964; Middlesbrough: 7,802, was 7,646; Redcar and Cleveland: 5,978, was 5,856; Stockton: 10,342, was 10,165; North Yorkshire: 19,807, was 19,353; York: 8,323, was 8,080; Newcastle: 18,346, was 18,214; North Tyneside: 8,704, was 8,604; South Tyneside: 8,333, was 8,208; Sunderland: 14,856, was 14,628; Northumberland: 12,283, was 12,103; Gateshead: 10,135, was 9,981. Total: 162,541, was 159,864, an increase of 2,677.
  • Boris Johnson warned it would take time to ease lockdown restrictions in England which could be in place until the end of March. The Prime Minister said there was “no choice” but to issue the stay-at-home order and close schools given the spread of coronavirus, particularly the more infectious new variant. However, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told MPs he does not expect regulations enabling a national lockdown to be fully in place until the end of March.
  • GCSE, AS and A-level exams in England this summer will be replaced by school assessments, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has confirmed. Mr Williamson told MPs that the Government will put its “trust in teachers, rather than algorithms”. The Education Secretary acknowledged that exams are the “fairest way” of assessing what a student knows, but said the impact of the pandemic meant it was not possible to hold exams in the summer.
  • Concern over children who do not have devices at home continues. Education Select Committee chairman Robert Halfon described the situation with schools as “a mess”. The Conservative MP told Sky News: “Clearly it has been a mess but we are where we are. But I think now we have to move on and make sure we have an exam system that is a level playing field for students and fair to the disadvantaged. We know that in the last lockdown millions of students did hardly any learning at all, despite the individual efforts of many teachers and many schools. We also know that despite hundreds of thousands of laptops going to students from the Government there are still hundreds of thousands of students on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
  • The Centre for Life in Newcastle is to become one of seven mass vaccination hubs across England, Downing Street has confirmed. Hubs will also be set up in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Surrey and Stevenage, Number 10 said. Venues will be converted into regional centres in an attempt to meet the Government target of vaccinating 14 million people UK-wide by February.
  • Teenagers hosting a house party which flouted Covid rules have been given police warnings - and the parents fined £200. Police were called to reports of ongoing anti-social behaviour at an address in the North Road area of Darlington last Wednesday, December 30. On arrival, officers found that there were 19 teenagers inside the property all under the age of 18. The dispatched team took details of all of those present, gave advice and issued warnings while the parents of the ‘host’ received a £200 fine.