The government has recorded a further 9,938 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK, bringing the total to 4,144,577.

It said a further 442 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of 9am today, bringing the UK total to 121,747.

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 142,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.

Only about one per cent of all people arriving in the UK are going into the hotel quarantine system, according to evidence given to MPs today.

Home Affairs Committee chair Yvette Cooper said on Wednesday that out of the 15,000 people arriving each day, just 150 on average were going to hotels for self-isolation.

You can find a video clip from the evidence session below:

Today’s Downing Street press conference will take place from 5pm, with education secretary Gavin Williamson and England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries, No 10 has confirmed.

London Heathrow airport has suffered a £2bn loss over the last year due to the severe impact of the coronavirus pandemic on air travel.

The chart below from Statista shows how the airport’s fortunes changed from 2019 to 2020:

Almost 200 people tested positive for coronavirus in an outbreak at a military barracks housing asylum seekers, the Home Office has confirmed.

The number of cases at Napier Barracks in Kent since the beginning of the year is far higher than initially reported.

Home Office Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft told the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday that there had been 178 positive tests in January and 19 in February.

Committee chairman Yvette Cooper responded to the figures by suggesting that this was “pretty clear evidence” that the accommodation was not Covid-safe.

“On what planet did you think that in the middle of a Covid crisis, it was safe or sensible to put over 20 people in a dormitory so they were all sleeping together in the same room with the same air overnight each night?” Ms Cooper said.

Mr Rycroft replied: “As the home secretary said, we were following the guidance at every stage and the guidance was to ensure there was as much space as possible, certainly two metres between beds.”

The barracks has been used as “emergency” accommodation since September, despite welfare concerns being repeatedly raised by campaigners.

Dr Jill O’Leary, the leading GP for the Helen Bamber Foundation’s medical advisory service, previously told the PA news agency that the barracks had been chosen for “political expediency” and the continued use amounted to a “moral failure”.

“The barracks need to be evacuated, there’s no justification and no argument left for keeping people in there,” she said.

Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine is safe, effective and able to completely prevent hospitalisations and deaths from Covid-19, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said.

In a critical step that could allow it to be approved in the US, the FDA endorsed the jab on Wednesday for emergency use authorisation.

Our reporter, Danielle Zoellner, has the full story below:

The current coronavirus vaccines are unlikely to see a “cliff edge” reduction in their effectiveness when faced with new variants, one of the experts behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab has said.

Professor Sarah Gilbert, from the University of Oxford, told the Commons Science and Technology Committee that there were good signs that Covid-19 variants would not suddenly start escaping from the effectiveness of vaccines.

“Certainly what we’re seeing at the moment is a reduction in efficacy against variants rather than falling off a cliff edge,” Professor Gilbert said.

“We have to remember that for the virus to mutate to evade the immune responses being induced by the vaccination, it may have to take a penalty.

“It may become a virus that doesn’t function quite as well as the original virus did, and that will prevent new variants which may escape the immune response by the vaccine, they may actually not spread so well.”

She added that viruses were “infinitely able to mutate” but said: “Currently I think the signs are good that we won’t see a sudden escape from the vaccine with a virus that is very well able to circulate”.

The government has been clear that everyone will receive their second dose of a coronavirus vaccine within 12 weeks, Downing Street has said.

Boris Johnson’s spokesperson was asked on Wednesday if holding back doses for people to receive a second jab was part of the reason for a dip in the number of daily doses administered in recent days.

“We have been clear that we will make sure that everybody has their second dose within the 12-week period,” they told a Westminster briefing.

“We said that since we changed the dosing regime, so of course we will make sure that we have that second dose available.

“But as I have said before, and as Matt Hancock has said before, we will continue to roll out the first dose to more and more people.”

The spokesperson added that the UK currently has capacity to administer hundreds of thousands of vaccines each day but supply has always been the “rate limiting factor”.

HSBC has decided to cut its global office space almost in half, with its chief executive arguing that the move will lead to a “very different style of working post-Covid”.

The decision raises the question of whether changes to work during the coronavirus pandemic could soon become permanent.

Our economics editor, Ben Chu, has taken a closer look at the issue below:

The organisers of Reading and Leeds music festivals are planning to go ahead with the event in August this year following the publication of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown.

Ministers are aiming to remove all legal limits on social contact by 21 June at the earliest, if the UK’s mass vaccination campaign is successful and hospitalisations remain low.

Our music correspondent, Roisin O’Connor, has the full story below: