Here is the latest Covid news that you need to know:

  • Care home staff in England could be required to get a coronavirus vaccine as a condition of deployment to protect elderly residents, the Government has said. The Department of Health and Social Care has launched a consultation on making vaccination a condition of deployment for care home staff. The five-week consultation will seek views on the proposal, any potential impact it could have on staffing and safety, how it could be implemented and who could be exempt. Staff, care providers, residents and their families and other stakeholders are being urged to take part. A decision is expected to be made this summer.
  • Downing Street has defended the production of a film about the UK’s “extraordinary” vaccine programme which is yet to be released more than a month after a trailer was posted online. Officials have refused to set out how much A Beacon Of Hope: The UK Vaccine Story has cost, or how much was paid for the dramatic music which accompanied the online teaser. The trailer was released on March 10, with the full version billed as “coming soon” and officials indicating it would have been released later that week.
  • Most popular European holiday destinations such as Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal should be on the Government’s “green list” for foreign travel, according to the boss of easyJet. Chief executive Johan Lundgren said he “would expect almost all major European countries” to be put in the low-risk category when overseas holidays from the UK are allowed to resume. Under the new traffic light system, people arriving in the UK from a “green” country will not be required to self-isolate, but those entering from an “amber” destination must quarantine for 10 days. Existing rules for arrivals from “red” locations will continue, including the mandatory stay in a quarantine hotel.
  • A popular pub has apologised and will offer free drinks to a 78-year-old customer who was refused service because he did not have a mobile phone to register his details using an app. The U-turn by The Angel Of Corbridge, Northumberland, came as Age UK warned that older drinkers were at risk of being discriminated against for not having a smartphone. As lockdown restrictions are eased in England, some pubs are asking customers to order through an online app in order to minimise contact with staff.
  • Travellers arriving at Heathrow are being forced to queue for up to six hours due to coronavirus checks at the border, an airport executive said. Chief solutions officer Chris Garton told MPs that “the situation is becoming untenable” and the police have been forced to step in. Giving evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee, he explained that wait times in recent days have typically been “well in excess of two hours and up to six hours”.
  • People have been urged “not to go wild” after social restrictions were eased as one expert warned “we could go back to square one”. Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said people should not behave in the same way as they did before the pandemic as he called for people to act cautiously for “a little bit more time”. It comes after the Prime Minister urged people to continue to “exercise restraint” as beer gardens were packed and shoppers flocked to high streets after the latest round of the Government’s coronavirus restrictions were lifted in England on Monday.
  • Pubs, restaurants and bars which reopened on Monday have said their sales were more than double the levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic struck, according to new figures. Hospitality data specialists at CGA said that like-for-like drink sales jumped by 113.8 per cent on the first day of outdoor trading, compared with the same day in 2019. Hospitality firms in England welcomed customers again on Monday after at least three months of closure due to the latest set of lockdown measures. However, only 38.2 per cent of venues, around 41,100 licensed premises in total, had the outdoor space to enable them to reopen this week.
  • There have been 53 new positive coronavirus tests in the North-East and North Yorkshire. Nationally, the Government said that, as of 9am on Wednesday, there had been a further 2,491 lab-confirmed cases in the UK.