Almost 190,000 jobs have been lost in the retail bloodbath since shops were first forced to shut their doors a year ago, according to new figures.

In exclusive data for the PA news agency, the Centre for Retail Research has revealed that 188,685 retail jobs have vanished between the start of the first lockdown on March 23 2020 and March 31 this year.

The figures come less than two weeks before non-essential shops reopen their doors to customers in England after the lengthy third lockdown.

However, shoppers will visit high streets and town centres that have been hit hard by the pandemic, with thousands of stores shutting their doors for good.

The figures revealed that 83,725 jobs lost in the period were due to administrations, including major collapses by Debenhams and Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group.

Meanwhile, around 11,986 jobs were cut during Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) restructuring processes.

Another 92,974 jobs were axed through rationalisation programmes, which included supermarkets Sainsbury’s and Asda cutting thousands of roles.

The devastating impact of the pandemic resulted in 15,153 store closures in shopping destinations across the UK, the figures also revealed.

According to real estate adviser Altus Group, up to 401,690 shops are currently shuttered around the country and could reopen in the next stage of Boris Johnson’s road map out of lockdown.

There is no evidence that uptake of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is slowing in the UK despite some countries pausing its rollout, a public health expert has said.

Professor Linda Bauld, from Edinburgh University, said all studies indicated the jab was safe and effective, while the fact different countries were reviewing their position was a sign that the system was working.

She told BBC’s Good Morning Scotland radio show that reports of blood clots were “very rare” and a direct link to the vaccine was very unlikely.

She said: “These kinds of pauses and reviews are a sign that the system is working.

“Because when you see either deaths or unlikely adverse events that you wouldn’t anticipate or you didn’t see in the trials it’s reasonable for regulators to look at this.

“The MHRA is still consistently saying there’s no cause for concern and that is absolutely the message to people.”

She added: “It doesn’t look from the behavioural response, the surveys I’ve seen, that it’s affecting uptake in the UK and that’s really important.”

Prof Bauld said she had recently received her blue letter inviting her for vaccination and she was “really looking forward” to it.

Evidence is growing that the occurrence of a number of rare blood clot events among people who have had the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is “causally related”, a scientist has said.

The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said on Thursday that it had identified 30 cases of rare blood clot events among people in the UK who had received the AstraZeneca jab, following similar reports from Germany.

Professor Paul Hunter, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “It is not uncommon to get clusters of rare events purely by chance.

“But, once you find that cluster in one population and it then crops up in another – such as previously in the German and now in the English – then I think the chances of that being a random association is very, very low.

“Clearly more work needs to be done, but I think the evidence is shifting more towards it being causally related at the moment.”

However he said that the risks of taking the AstraZenca vaccine were still far outweighed by the risks of not getting the jab.

“The chance of dying if you don’t have the vaccine is many times greater than the risk of dying from CVT (cerebral venous thrombosis) after the AstraZeneca vaccine, even if it does turn out, as I suspect it will, that this link is causal,” he said.

Doctors have been issued with new advice to help them spot and treat a rare blood-clotting disorder that may be linked to the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.

The British Society for Haematology decided to act after some experts became concerned at the number of cases of blood clotting linked to a rare syndrome known as thrombocytopenia.

Our Health Correspondent Shaun Lintern reports:

Leicester has been in some form of lockdown since the very first nationwide lockdown on 23 March last year.

As restrictions were eased across the rest of the country, stubbornly high coronavirus rates meant the city remained largely closed throughout. Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby told The Independent that Leicester became “a footnote”.

My colleague Colin Drury finds out how people in Leicester are making the most of restrictions finally being eased:

It has been reported that travellers who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 could avoid quarantine measures when returning from abroad.

Boris Johnson is expected to signal on Monday that foreign travel will return with restrictions based on a traffic light system.

Countries will be rated as red, amber or green based on risk factors including Covid infection rates, vaccination levels and the prevalence of variants.

According to The Telegraph, those returning to the UK will be expected to have pre-departure Covid tests no matter what their vaccination status is.

But travellers who have received both jabs of a Covid vaccine could need fewer tests after returning from low-risk countries, and may not have to quarantine for 10 days after staying in medium-risk countries, the paper said.

Residents in care homes across England will be able to have two regular visitors from 12 April provided they are both tested for coronavirus, the government has announced.

Babies and children are not counted as one of the two visitors, allowing residents to reunite with small bubbles of family and friends for the first time in months.

Care home residents are currently only permitted to see one regular visitor, with this being changed in tandem with the roadmap out of lockdown.

My colleague Bethany Dawson reports:

Good morning, and welcome to The Independent’s liveblog following the latest developments in the coronavirus pandemic.