The British public have more confidence in vaccines than those in other countries, a survey for The Independent suggests.

Elsewhere, people are particularly wary of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, whereas in the UK, as many people believe it is effective as believe the Pfizer/Biontech jab is.

Less than 40 per cent of the French public has confidence in the Oxford and Moderna vaccines, and less than 60 per cent has confidence in the Pfizer.

Progress in the fight against Covid-19 has meant the next phase of opening schools and changes to outdoor mixing will go ahead in Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says.

She confirmed all primary school pupils and more secondary pupils will be back in school from Monday, while changes to current rules will allow four people from two households to mix outdoors from Friday.

On the one-year anniversary of Covid-19 being declared a pandemic, a leading animal-welfare organisation is writing to United Nations and World Health Organisation chiefs, calling on them to lead radical overhauls by governments of how humans treat animals to prevent future pandemics.

They call for a ban on fur farms, live animal markets, the dog and cat meat trade and wildlife trade, and a crackdown on dangerous factory farming practices. My report on the warning that the world must stop tackling the symptoms without tackling the root causes of the pandemic:

The proportion of NHS workers in England who reported feeling unwell due to work-related stress in 2020 has risen past four in ten, a survey of more than half a million employees has found.

Rises were sharpest in acute and community trusts and acute specialist trusts, the annual survey found.

More than four in ten workers (44 per cent) reported feeling unwell because of work-related stress in the previous 12 months, up from 40 per cent the previous year.

A total of 595,270 NHS employees in England responded to the NHS Staff Survey 2020, which was carried out between September and December last year.

The proportion of staff members who said they had worked shifts in the last three months while feeling unwell fell from 59 per cent in 2019 to 46 in 2020, as people were told to stay home if they had Covid symptoms.

Danny Mortimer, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the general findings were encouraging but there were “significant areas of concern”.

He said: “The overall picture is encouraging given the unprecedented and most challenging of times NHS staff have worked through over the past 12 months. There are, though, significant areas of concern and the recent data on the continued poorer experience of ethnic minority staff starkly reminds NHS leaders that staff experience varies unacceptably in their organisations.”

Mr Mortimer said with nearly one in five people (18.2 per cent) considering leaving the health service, there can be “no room for complacency”, referring to the government’s “intention to offer only a 1 per cent pay rise” to NHS workers.

Denmark has temporarily paused its AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine programme after reports of cases of blood clots forming, including one death, Danish authorities said on Thursday.

The vaccine will be suspended for 14 days but officials have not disclosed how many reports of blood clots there had been.

Any complications with the vaccine are likely to stem from a specific batch rather than a wider issue.

The proportion of people successfully contacted by Test and Trace in the week to 3 March has fallen slightly since the previous week.

Of the 44,508 people transferred to the Test and Trace system in the week to 3 March, 88.6 per cent were reached and asked to provide details of recent close contacts, compared to 89.1 per cent the week before.

More than one in ten (10.9 per cent) of people transferred to Test and Trace were not reached, while a further 0.5 per cent did not provide any communication details.

More than 300,000 NHS patients in England have now been waiting more than a year for routine surgery, according to the latest NHS data.

The statistics for waiting times in January show the impact of the second wave of coronavirus, with year-long waits jumping by 75,000 in a month from December 2020.

The number of people having to wait more than 52 weeks for hospital treatment stood at 304,044 in January 2021, the highest number for any calendar month since January 2008. There were just 1,643 patients waiting over a year in January 2020.

Read Shaun Lintern’s report here:

Train ticket sales plunged by 77 per cent in the year up to March 2021 compare to the previous year, Trainline has said.

The train and coach ticket travel platform said net sales for the 12 months to the end of February were 23 per cent of levels before the pandemic, with revenues of just £473 million, compared with £2 billion a year earlier.

Meanwhile, business travel made just £75 million in net ticket sales, compared with £1.2 billion a year earlier.

Bosses said they were optimistic for the future and saw a rise in sales during the summer months when restrictions were eased.

The company said: “Encouragingly, when lockdowns and restrictions were eased during the summer months of 2020, leisure and commuter passenger volumes recovered relatively quickly in Trainline’s key European markets, while Trainline’s UK consumer net ticket sales recovered faster than the market, reflecting an acceleration in the shift to online and digital channels.”

Hundreds of homeless EU nationals were sent back to their home countries under a controversial “reconnection” process during the first eight months of the pandemic, new figures reveal.

Data obtained through freedom of information (FOI) law and seen by The Independent shows 396 EU citizens in England were subject to voluntary reconnection between March and October 2020. This was up from the annual average of 338 in the previous five years.

The true figure for the pandemic expected to be higher, as 28 per cent of local authorities did not respond to the FOI request submitted by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

Read May Bulman’s exclusive here:

Urgent cancer referrals by GPs in England fell by 11 per cent in January compared to a year ago, NHS England figures show.

A total of 171,231 referrals were made in January 2021, compared with 191,852 in January 2020.

The year-on-year drop follows increases of 7 per cent in December 2020 and 2 per cent in November.

Urgent referrals for breast cancer symptoms decreased by 13 per cent, from 14,299 in January 2020 to 12,437 in January 2021.

A&E attendances at hospitals in England were down by one-third in February compared to a year ago, the latest figures from NHS England show.

A total of 1.3 million attendances were recorded in February 2021, down from 2 million in February 2020.

After adjusting for the leap year in 2020, NHS England said attendances were down year-on-year by 33 per cent.

NHS England said the drop is “likely to be a result of the Covid-19 response” – suggesting that people are still staying away from A&E departments because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Emergency admissions to A&E at hospitals in England also fell last month, down from 510,811 in February 2020 to 421,651 in February 2021 – NHS England also attributes this to the pandemic.

Cancer patients receive limited protection from a single dose of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, researchers have said, urging a review of the 12-week gap for patients.

A study from King’s College London and the Francis Crick Institute found that three weeks after the first shot, antibody responses were found in 39 per cent of people with solid cancers and 13 per cent of people with blood cancer.

This compares with 97 per cent of people without cancer, according to the research on 205 people, who comprised 151 with cancer and 54 healthy controls.

When cancer patients were given their second shot within three weeks, 95 per cent of people with solid tumours had detectable antibodies.

Although researcher called for patients to be given the second jab within Pfizer’s recommended three-week window, Cancer Research UK said the study – which has not yet been peer-reviewed – was relatively small and people should continue to follow the advice of their doctors.

As prospective holidaymakers wait to see if summer trips may go ahead, the UK’s main gateway says passenger numbers have fallen to their lowest level since 1966 – the year England won the World Cup.

Heathrow’s figures for February show just 461,000 passengers arrived or departed during the entire four-week spell.

Normally the London airport would handle more travellers than that in just two days.

It was the first full month since the third lockdown began, and coincided with the introduction of hotel quarantine for arrivals from 33 “red list” countries.

Read Simon Calder’s report here:

China will continue to cooperate with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its search for the origins of the coronavirus, Chinese premier Li Keqiang told a media briefing.

Mr Li was responding to a question regarding US criticism that China was not transparent in sharing data on early infections with a WHO probe earlier this year.

The premier, speaking on Thursday at a press briefing at the end of China’s annual session of parliament, said China had “acted in a fact-based manner and with an open, transparent and cooperative approach”.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has defended Keir Starmer’s “constructive” attitude towards dealing with the government during the pandemic.

Ms Rayner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Keir Starmer made a decision, which I think was the right one, to try and be constructive, and to ensure that we gave constructive opposition that worked in the national interest.

“And that’s what we focused on. Now I know some people felt that that was giving them an easy ride, it wasn’t.

“It’s incredibly frustrating, especially when you see the kids not getting the laptops they need, when they’re not giving them the food, when the billions of pounds has been squandered.”

She added that Labour has “highlighted” these issues while trying to maintain a “constructive” approach.

A new treatment has been found to cut Covid hospitalisation and deaths by 85 per cent, the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced.

The drug, VIR-7831, is a monoclonal antibody treatment – laboratory-produced molecules that mimic human antibodies – which has been found to be successful in treating people with mild to moderate Covid.

GSK and its partner, Vir Biotechnology, plan to immediately seek an emergency use authorisation in the United States and approval in other countries, including potentially in the UK.

A separate study has found that VIR-7831 is effective against the main current Covid-19 variants, including the Kent, South African and Brazilian variants, the firm said.

The government must reveal how it will ease travel restrictions by 12 April, a cross-party group of MPs has demanded.

For the last 11 weeks, all holidays from the UK have been illegal. Residents of England have been told they may not go abroad for non-essential purposes until 17 May at the earliest.

The administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have not yet set proposed dates for ending their bans on overseas travel.

In an interim report into the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the aviation sector, the Transport Select Committee says: “The aviation industry thrives on certainty. In order to return passenger aircraft to the skies and to connect the UK to the world, a roadmap to restart international travel is urgently needed.

“The Department [for Transport] has not yet specified the standards that destination countries must meet on vaccine and testing capabilities in order to reopen for travel with the UK.”

John Lewis has warned it does not expect all its stores to reopen after lockdown following a £517m annual loss over the course of the pandemic.

The group did not say how many of its 42 John Lewis shops are under threat, adding that it will make a final decision at the end of March following discussions with landlords.

Recent reports suggested another eight stores were likely to be closed, adding to the eight announced in July.

Hello and welcome to The Independent’s rolling coverage of the coronavirus crisis.