Cabinet minister Michael Gove has said that a list of countries from which travellers will be required to quarantine in hotels when they arrive in the UK is to be reviewed.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We will be reviewing today how extensive that list of countries needs to be and we will be guided by advice from our scientific advisers and we will be reporting back later on where the line will be drawn.”

Mr Gove was pressed about whether stricter border measures should have been imposed last March, to which he replied: “There has been a lively debate about what we should or should not have done then. I don’t intend to add my voice to that debate.

“I think there will be an appropriate moment to review all the decisions this Government and others have taken during the pandemic.”

Budget airline EasyJet expects to operate no more than 10 per cent of its flight programme between January and March due to increasingly strict travel regulations.

It said its revenues plummeted 88 per cent at the end of 2020, with turnover slumping to £165 million.

In the three months to the end of December, it flew only 18 per cent of its normal schedule. EasyJet has also confirmed that 1,400 UK jobs were cut as it slashed its workforce by up to 30 per cent to reduce costs.

Chief executive Johan Lundgren said: “Our performance in the period was in line with management expectations, despite more stringent restrictions coming into place.

“We have taken the right actions to emerge leaner with a reduced cost base, and the retrenchment of legacy carriers at key airports will provide additional opportunities for easyJet.

“Our core strengths remain unaffected by the pandemic. We have loyal customers who know and trust our brand, an unmatched network, offer value for money and a leading position on sustainability with high customer satisfaction.

“The key to unlocking travel is going to be the vaccination programmes combined with governments progressively removing restrictions when it is safe to.

“And, in the meantime, our flexible industry-leading policies mean that customers can make plans and book with confidence.”

Eva Gicain, a 30-year-old NHS nurse, became very sick with Covid-19 while in her third trimester of pregnancy and was admitted to hospital in Basildon in late October. She had an emergency Caesarean section, and has no memory of giving birth to her daughter, Elleana.

She fought for her life and was finally discharged from hospital after 76 days. She described her first meeting with her daughter as a “special moment”, adding: “When I held Elleana for the first time I didn’t want to let go.”

Sam Russell reports on the heartwarming story below:

The prime minister’s visit to Scotland to promote the Union – amid the pandemic – is “absolutely essential, Cabinet minister Michael Gove has insisted.

It comes after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon questioned whether the trip is necessary amid soaring coronavirus infection rates throughout the UK.

Boris Johnson will visit Scotland on Thursday to argue that the Union has been integral in administering the Covid-19 vaccine, providing coronavirus testing and giving economic support.

Mr Gove was challenged about the necessity of the trip by BBC Breakfast host Naga Munchetty, where he insisted that the prime minister is a “huge asset” for the Union.

Watch the exchange below:

Cabinet minister Michael Gove has told Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne to apologise and issue a retraction after he was accused of spreading “dangerous misinformation” about coronavirus figures.

Sir Desmond reportedly told an anti-lockdown group in November that the threat of Covid-19 was a “manageable risk”, adding that “figures have been manipulated”.

Our Political Correspondent Ashley Cowburn has the full story:

Sir Jeremy Farrar warned that the new mutations of the coronavirus are a “warning of what is coming, which we must take incredibly seriously”.

He told the Today programme: “In the future I think we will see variants that escape from the vaccines. The thing to do at the moment is to vaccinate as many people as we can in the world to drive down the amount of transmission and prevent these new variants coming.

“That’s in our national interests, it’s in an equitable and ethical interest, and it’s in the world’s interests to do so.”

Sir Jeremy also said that travel restrictions could “buy you time” but wouldn’t prevent new variants from arriving eventually.

He said: “Travel restrictions have to be comprehensive, they have to be in place for a long time and in the end they buy you time, they won’t prevent new variants arising.”

However, he did not think that current travel restrictions should stay in place for the rest of the year as it “would be very damaging” from an economic and financial aspect.

“The way to avoid that is to get vaccines to the world, reduce the amount of transmission around the world, reduce the chance of new variants, and protect the world,” he added.

Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), has warned that vaccine nationalist must be avoided.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he was asked if vaccine nationalist was now a reality.

He replied: “Yes, I’m afraid it is and it’s something that we absolutely have to negotiate, we have to avoid, and it doesn’t serve anybody to have these fights over vaccine supply.”

He said the only answer is to “drive down transmission, to keep it low and to make these vaccines available globally, otherwise we will see new variants coming up, new strains of this virus which will come back to all of our countries”.

Such new strains “at some point in the future” might escape vaccines, he added.

England’s deputy chief medical officer has said that the UK is “maybe just a few months away” from the rollout of coronavirus vaccines “changing all of our lives for the better”.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam told Channel 4 News on Wednesday that the country will need to “keep the faith and stick with it… for just a teeny bit longer”.

Read the full report by my colleague, Samuel Osborne:

Covid-19 infections are at the highest level recorded in England since May, according to Imperial College London’s React study, which shows one in 64 people are infected with the virus.

The research saw more than 167,600 volunteers tested in England between 6 and 22 January, and showed that Covid-19 infections remained very high throughout this time.

It also showed that infections in England have flattened but are at the highest level recorded by researchers, with the indication of a decline in the last week of the survey.

Professor Paul Elliott, director of the programme, said: “The number of people infected with the virus is at the highest level that we’ve recorded since we began testing last May.

“We’re not seeing the sharp drop in infections that happened under the first lockdown and if infections aren’t brought down significantly, hospitals won’t be able to cope with the number of people that need critical care.

“We all need to stay at home wherever possible and help bring the virus under control and protect our already over-stretched health system.”

Prof Elliott added: “I think the suggestion now that there is a decline happening, particularly in some regions may reflect now that the restrictions through lockdown are beginning to have some effect on the prevalence.”

He said that even though there is a suggestion of “a downtick”, it is by no means as fast as happened in the first lockdown.

“When we were first in the field in May, there was a rapid decline in prevalence,” he said.

Former prime minister Tony Blair has urged Boris Johnson to use the G7 to push for a global coronavirus vaccine passport scheme, despite cabinet minister Michael Gove saying earlier this month there were no plans for such a product.

Mr Blair told the Telegraph on Thursday and the UK needed to take advantage of its presidency of the G7 to lead the drive for a global vaccination passport so that travel across borders can resume.

He said there were two significant risks if the prime minister could not convince his fellow leaders to back such a scheme.

“One if that everyone just does their own thing, which is much more chaotic and difficult to manage. Or secondly, there’s a set of rules in place that you may not be that happy with,” he said.

It comes after Zurab Pololikashvili, secretary-general of the UN World Tourism Organisation, last week told the Global Tourism Crisis Committee in Madrid that vaccinations should be part of a “wider, coordinated approach that includes certificates and passes for safe cross-border travel”.

Mr Blair spoke to the newspaper ahead of a new report by the Tony Blair Institute, which agues the the government’s more restrictive travel rules could be eventually more easily repealed if a universal vaccine scheme were in place.

He said: “It’s better to have common rules and a common verification system, so that people know what your disease status is and know it with some validation.”