More than 4.2 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The US CDC said it had administered 4,225,756 first doses of Moderna and Pfizer jabs as of this morning and distributed 13,071,925 doses.

The agency also reported a further 168,637 cases and 2,428 deaths in the 24 hour period up to 4pm EST on Friday.

According to the ourworldindata website, Israel has vaccinated the highest proportion of its population so far, followed by Bahrain, the UK and the US.

Gavin Williamson is coming under intensifying pressure to delay the reopening of all schools in England – just days before primary schoolchildren are set to return to lessons after the Christmas holidays.

A series of high-profile unions have issued statements calling for an immediate switch to remote learning but the government has described the move as a “last resort”.

Mr Williamson has already bowed to pressure to delay the reopening of primary schools in London until 18 January.

Here’s more detail on the news that Labour’s shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens is being treated for Covid-19 in hospital.

The 54-year-old Welsh MP had been “laid low” by the virus for several days, according a statement on her Twitter account.

Labour’s shadow culture secretary, Jo Stevens, is being treated for Covid in hospital

The 54-year-old Welsh MP for Cardiff Central had been “laid low for a while” by the virus, according to her Twitter account.

Her team tweeted: “Jo has asked us to let you know that she is being treated in hospital for Covid. Thanks for all your good wishes we will give an update when we can.”

Labour leader Keir Starmer was among those wishing Ms Stevens well.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education has said moving to online learning is a “last resort” and ministers want “classrooms to reopen wherever possible in the new term”.

The department published plans for students to go ahead with their return to school and added: “In some local areas, under the contingency framework students will have remote education except for exam years and vulnerable and critical worker children.”

The spokesperson said: “Children’s education has consistently been a national priority, which is why we want classrooms to reopen wherever possible in the new term.

“Schools will continue to implement appropriate safety measures to help mitigate the risk of transmission.

“As we’ve said, we will move to remote education as a last resort, with involvement of public health officials, in areas where infection and pressures on the NHS are highest.”

NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said in a statement this evening: “The legal process we have instigated covers a wide range of issues from the scientific advice the government is drawing on, right through to the proposed arrangements for covid testing in schools.

“We are now awaiting the government’s response. That will determine our next steps.”

He added that the union will continue to press for all parts of the country to follow the contingency framework, which all London boroughs were instructed to follow yesterday.

Paediatricians are seeking to reassured worried parents after reports of increased coronavirus admissions among younger people, and have said they are not seeing significant pressure from the disease in children’s wards.

Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), said the “overwhelming majority” of children and young people have no symptoms or are mildly sick with the virus.

He said that while the more transmissible variant of Covid-19 appears to affect all ages, paediatricians are not seeing any greater severity in children.

“Children’s wards are usually busy in the winter. As of now we are not seeing signifiant pressure from Covid-19 in paediatrics across the UK,” said Prof Viner in a statement today.

A number of paediatricians working in children’s wards have supported his comments.

Dr Ronny Cheung, consultant paediatrician at the Evelina Children’s Hospital in London said: “I’ve been the on-call consultant in a London children’s hospital this week. Covid is rife in hospitals, but not among children – and that is corroborated by my colleagues across London.”

Dr Liz Whittaker, consultant paediatrician at St Mary’s Hospital London, said she continues to “worry for my elders, not my kids”.

“There are lots of children with Covid positive tests, but thankfully only small numbers with severe disease of Pims (rare inflammatory disease associated with Covid), and these are within expected levels – given the London rates,” she said.

Cancer surgeries could be cancelled across London as NHS chiefs try to prepare for surge of patients severely ill with Covid-19, it has been reported.

According to the Observer, the drastic move would mean that cancer patients could be waiting months for potentially life-saving operations.

Operations that are likely to be cancelled are known as “priority two” procedures, mainly involving cancer patients who need to be operated on within four weeks. The cancer could grow or spread as a result of any delay.

A senior London NHS figure was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the impact of a delay in surgery “depends on when they get rebooked”.

With London hospitals becoming quickly overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, senior doctors and hospital bosses have warned the NHS is at risk of being “maxed out” and concerns have been raised over the potential burnout in overworked healthcare staff.

NASUWT has called for the Welsh Government to move all teaching to online learning over fears of the new strain of coronavirus, and threatened to take “appropriate action in order to protect members whose safety is put at risk”.

Neil Butler, NASUWT official for Wales, said the education service has been thrown into “chaos and confusion”.

“The whole of Wales is in Tier 4 and yet there are schools in Wales planning to open this week to full face-to-face teaching,” he said.

“We need to hear from the Education Minister that face-to-face teaching is suspended until schools can review their risk assessments to be able to cope with the new strain.

“During that time teachers can finally get the time to develop distance learning resources that are so desperately needed.”

NAHT Cymru added that without a plan for a phased return to school, “we are failing all children”.

Laura Doel, director of NAHT Cymru, said: “Yet again schools are expected to pick up the pieces of a last-minute announcement on school reopening. With less than 48 hours until the end of term, school leaders across Wales must develop a phased return plan for January and share this with parents.

“Today headteachers are hauled up in meetings with the local authorities trying to work out what a phased return will look like. The result, despite the best efforts of LAs to support schools, will be an inconsistent picture across Wales that lacks clarity and leaves headteachers to have to deal with the fallout from parents who are justifiably angry about the uncertainty.”

A scientist has warned that people living in Scotland should be prepared to live with level 4 restrictions for “slightly longer than the Scottish government currently plans”.

Professor Linda Bauld, of the University of Edinburgh, told BBC News: “The situation at the moment before we have more people vaccinated is that every time we loosen restrictions, infections rates tend to rise, and that will be particularly the case during the winter.

“So I think mentally, we need to be prepared for the fact that we may be living with the level 4 restrictions for slightly longer than the Scottish government currently plans. I hope that is not the case, but as everybody in the country knows as we’ve gone through the pandemic, sometimes these things have lasted longer to allow us to get into a steady state.

“The other thing we really need to recognise with this new variant is, even with the restrictions we have, because the variant is more transmissible from all the data I’ve seen, and it can increase the R by several points, it means that we actually need to get the R below 1 to be confident that we’re making progress – and we’re quite some way off of that at the moment.”

As hospital admissions continue to rise, NHS trusts in Kent have reported bed occupancy levels in intensive care reaching 137 per cent on New Year’s Day.

Our Health Correspondent Shaun Lintern gives us a window into the desperate situation hospitals are facing: