Patients queuing outside Naples hospital given oxygen in cars

Suspected Covid-19 patients were given oxygen in their cars as they queued up outside a hospital in Naples, Italy.  

Cotugno Hospital in Campania appeared to be overwhelmed by an influx of patients as staff made their way up lines of cars to assess people.  

They reportedly checked blood oxygen levels and handed out oxygen tanks to those with breathing difficulties. 

Vaccine volunteer proud to have played ‘small but important’ role

A volunteer on the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid trial says he is proud to have played a “small but important” role in the development of a vaccine.  

Jack Sommers, a 35-year-old freelance journalist from southwest London, told PA: “In years to come we’ll always remember this, in decades we’ll remember this, in 50 years we’ll talk about the coronavirus lockdown – we might even still be living in its shadow, I think it will change things forever.  

“So when I’m asked ‘what did you do in coronavirus lockdown?’, I didn’t write a novel, I didn’t become an Olympian, but I did take part in a vaccine trial and that’s a story I’ve told many times in the last six months, and I imagine I’ll probably tell in some form or other for the rest of my life.”  

Mr Sommers has received two shots – one in May and a booster in September – of either the experimental Oxford vaccine or a placebo. 

£10 ‘bubble’ test rolled out in stores

A rapid £10 coronavirus test that can be used on “bubbles” of up to 10 people at once has been launched for British consumers.

The test from DnaNudge, an Imperial College London spinout company, is available for people without Covid-19 symptoms and is able to return results in 90 minutes.

DnaNudge said it is now open for online bookings for the test at its store in London’s Covent Garden.

A postal at-home service is due to be launched across the UK “within weeks”, the company added.

Test and Trace app could record whether vaccine has been received, Dido Harding says

The head of the government’s Test and Trace system has indicated that work is being carried out on allowing people to “do more things” if they had either natural or vaccine-acquired immunity, which she said could mean allowing the app to record whether someone has been inoculated.

“One of the potential scenarios for the future is being able to use some combination of our understanding of immunity, both natural and acquired, together with testing data to enable people to do more things,” Dido Harding told two committees of MPs this morning.

“But it’s very early days.”

Asked whether that work was being carried out now, Baroness Harding said: “We have always aimed to invest ahead of the science.”

Wales cancels all school exams next summer

The Welsh education minister has announced all school grades will be based on classroom assessments next summer in a bid to ensure fairness.

A review into last year’s exams process convinced the Welsh government to cancel next year’s exams, it said, and classroom assessments with external marking will replace formal exams.

“In this situation, it is impossible to guarantee a level playing field for exams to take place,” education minister Kirsty Williams said in a statement.

Our reporter Zoe Tidman has more details here:

Rapid Covid testing to be rolled out to cities including London, Manchester and Birmingham

Cities including London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Nottingham and Bristol are to get rapid-turnaround coronavirus tests of the kind trailed in Liverpool over the past few days, our political editor Andrew Woodcock.

Health secretary Matt Hancock released a list of 66 authorities in England to be sent a total of 600,000 of the new lateral flow tests, which are able to deliver results in a matter of minutes.

And he said his aim was to roll out the tests across the whole of the UK as part of a Operation Moonshot drive to quickly identify people infected with Covid-19 so that they and their close contacts can self-isolate and avoid passing the disease on.

Around 10,000 tests are to be sent to each of the participating areas so they can start mass testing in their localities, in a process which the Department of Health and Social said would kick-start a “significant expansion” of testing across the country.

British Airways and Lufthansa get Covid safety rating

British Airways and Lufthansa have become the first two airlines in the world to be given a Covid-19 safety rating.

Both airlines received a four-star rating (out of a potential five stars).  

Helen Coffey has more on this:

UK regulator could approve jabs quickly

Matt Hancock has said the UK’s medicines regulator could approve the Pfizer or Oxford jabs within days of a licence application being submitted.

The health secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The MHRA, which is one of the best medical regulators in the world, they’ve been working closely with the companies, with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, so that they’ve been looking at the data all the way through in what’s called a rolling review.

“(This is) rather than waiting, as is normal, for the end of the process, for all the data to be then handed over for them to start looking at it.

“So that means that the regulator will be able to make a judgement on whether this is clinically safe, and not just take the company’s word for it, but do that within a matter of days from a formal licence application, because it has been doing that work in parallel, as opposed to sequentially.”

easyJet is marking 25 years since its first flight from Luton to Glasgow – but with no flights on the route until 3 December due to England’s lockdown 2.0.

Helen Coffey has this exclusive report:

Test and trace ‘not a silver bullet’

Baroness Dido Harding, chair of NHS Test and Trace, said testing and tracing was not a “silver bullet” to holding back the spread of coronavirus.

When asked by the health and social care and science and technology committees why the service had not stopped a second wave of infections, she said: “Much as I would love that testing and tracing on its own would be a silver bullet to holding back the tide of Covid, unfortunately the evidence in the UK and in every other country in Europe is that’s not the case.

“That, actually, the way we have to tackle the disease is through a variety of different interventions and we are one of the ways, not the only way.”