Priti Patel said tougher enforcement of existing rules, as opposed to introducing new measures, would help reduce the spread of coronavirus.

Despite the R number still being above one after a fortnight of lockdown, the home secretary said stricter measures were not needed.

“The focus has to be on compliance and enforcement of the regulations and the rules as they stand,” she told the PA news agency.

“You can only leave your home for a limited number of reasons and police are enforcing that rigidly, stringently across the country.

“That has been illustrated in the number of fines over the weekend, in the last week, the number of house parties, [unlicensed musical events] and also members of the public who have been spoken to by the police.

“That will continue and actually it’s by enforcing the rules, the public following the rules, that we will get the R value down.”

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will lead a press conference this evening, Downing Street has said after the vaccine rollout was expanded to invite over-70s and the extremely clinically vulnerable for jabs.

The health secretary will speak after ten new mass vaccination centres opened their doors but a top NHS official warned the vaccine programme is not expected to lift pressure on the health service for several weeks.

The Welsh government has been criticised for being slower than other parts of the UK to rollout the coronavirus vaccine, as the first minister Mark Drakeford defended holding back tens of thouands of doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

Mr Drakeford said it would be “logistically very damaging” to use all doses of the Pfizer vaccine at once before supplies can be replenished but shadow health minister Andrew Davies said the first minister’s approach made “no clinical sense whatsoever”.

The British Medical Association also weighed in to share their concern over the Welsh government’s strategy and said vaccine delivery for health care workers “must be accelerated”.

The NHS has dramatically increased its number of critical care beds in the face of an “execptional” situation, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation said.

Danny Mortimer, who heads the membership body for NHS trusts, said the health service now ahs 5,500 critical care beds, up from 4,000 a year ago with several hundred more due to become available today.

“That’s a sign of both the numbers of people that are coming through, but also how really, really ill, how much care and attention, how much help with their breathing, how much damage has been done to people’s internal organs,” he told Times Radio.

But he warned staff are under huge pressure as the NHS does not have any more doctors or nurses trained in critical care than it did at the start of the pandemic.

Professor Stephen Powis has warned annual vaccination programmes may be needed to deal with coronavirus variants that emerge in the future, Samuel Lovett reports.

The national medical director for NHS England said the current vaccines appeared to be “perfectly adequate” in providing protection against the different variants that have been recently identified.

However, scientists have warned that Sars-CoV-2 – the virus responsible for Covid-19 – will continue to further mutate as it continues to spread throughout the global population.

Read the full story here:

Lockdown is law until 31 March though Boris Johnson said the situation will remain under review, with the first official review coming on Wednesday.

This morning, vaccines minister Nadim Zahawi said lockdown measures will not be eased until at least March, mirroring comments made on Sunday by foreign secretary Dominic Raab.

Joe Middleton has taken a more thorough look at what has been said on the end point so far:

Professor Stephen Powis assured the public that mass vaccination centres are safe as he encouraged people to take up the offer of a jab.

The national medical director for NHS England said the vaccine centres are set up to “maintain social distancing” and are safe for visitors, including the extremely vulnerable.

“The centres are set up to make sure that people can feel assured they can come here and get the vaccine safely,” Prof Powis told BBC Breakfast.

“I would really encourage everybody, including the clinically vulnerable, to get the vaccine – that’s the best way of keeping yourself safe from Covid.”

Ten new mass vaccination centres are due to open across England today, joining the seven existing sites, 1,000 surgeries and more than 250 hospitals already providing jabs.

• Berkshire: Salt Hill Activity Centre in Slough
• Dorset: Bournemouth International Centre
• Essex: The Lodge in Wickfield
• Lancashire: Blackburn Cathedral
• Lincolnshire: Princess Royal Sports Arena in Boston
• London: Olympic Office Centre in Wembley
• Merseyside: St Helens Rugby Ground
• Norfolk: Norwich Food Court
• Somerset: Taunton Racecourse
• North Yorkshire: Askham Bar park-and-ride in York

A man found living in a US airport for three months said he was “scared to go home due to Covid”, Deputy Head of Travel Helen Coffey reports.

Aditya Singh, 36, had been staying undetected at a secure section of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, since 19 October.

He arrived on a flight from his home city of Los Angeles, California, and never left. It wasn’t until nearly three months later, on 16 January, that Singh was approached by two United Airlines employees and apprehended by police.

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Veteran Labour MP Margaret Hodge shared her experience getting the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, urging others to keep their appointments to recieve a jab.